One of the class, Josiah King, sent me this nice youtube clip from a BBC nature documentary on alarm calling. It features a little example of deception in alarm calling – such events are attested in the literature, although I think the example in this clip is an illustrative fabrication, since the footage looks like it’s been cut together rather than being shot for real and I think these events will be very rare. But it’s still thought-provoking. In class today we talked about reciprocal altruism and how that might facilitate the evolution of communication in situations when only the receiver benefits from an interaction. This video is clearly related, since it talks about deception and punishment, but it actually raises two other interesting issues. Firstly, unlike in Oliphant’s simulation 3, the consequences of abusing the signalling system could be non-communicative – people might just beat you up if they found out you had signalled deceptively, or not signalled when you should. But secondly, it also highlights the dangers of being a receiver – you allow yourself to be manipulated by another individual who is attempting to maximise their own fitness, not yours. In class I tried to push the idea that sending has costs and no benefits, but maybe receiving also has potential costs. If so, that further complicates the evolution of signalling – maybe the mechanisms Oliphant considers will also help in solving the problem of manipulative senders too. You could find out by modelling it.
The home of the LEC research unit at the University of Edinburgh