Tactical or functional deception is the use of signals or displays from an animal's normal repertoire to mislead or deceive another individual.
[4] In an anecdotal account, Simmons reported that a female marsh harrier courted a male to obtain access to food he had stored.
[5] More extensive studies focused on possibly deceitful behaviour in the pied flycatcher, a species in which males may possess more than one territory.
Cachers withdraw from conspecifics when hiding their food and usually place their caches behind structures, out of sight of potential observers.
In particular, d'Isa et al. have observed that free-living black-striped mice (Apodemus agrarius) perform a peculiar deceptive dodging maneuver to escape from a chaser mouse.
It has been claimed that she once tore a steel sink out of its moorings and when her handlers confronted her, Koko signed "cat did it" and pointed at her innocent pet kitten.
[1][14][15] Deceit in great apes has been studied under experimental conditions, one of which is summarised by Kirkpatrick:[15] Deceptive behaviour has been observed in Old World monkeys including baboons (Papio ursinus).
In one of their articles, Byrne and Whiten recorded observations of "intimate tactical deception" within a group of baboons, and documented examples that they classified as follows: A juvenile using warning screams to gain access to underground food storages which otherwise would have been inaccessible; an exaggerated "looking" gesture (which in an honest context would mean detection of a predator) produced by a juvenile to avoid attack by an adult male; recruitment of a "fall-guy" (a third party used by the deceiver to draw attention or aggression); and using one's own movement pattern to draw group-mates away from food caches.
They use alarm calls normally reserved for predator sightings— either barks (used specifically for aerial stimuli), peeps, or hiccups— to elicit a response in fellow group members and then take advantage of the distraction to pilfer food.
In a series of experiments directed by Brandon Wheeler a group of tufted capuchin monkeys was provided with bananas on feeding platforms.