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| © SongayeNovell, iStock / Getty Images Plus The Surprising Reasons Why Animals Play Dead |
By Michele Debczak, Mental Floss
Fight or flight are cited as the two most common responses animals
have to immediate threats. But there's a third reaction that will seem
familiar to anyone who's seen a "dead" possum spring to life: In the
face of danger, some animals will enter a tonic state as a last-ditch
shot at survival. Assuming a vulnerable, motionless position may seem
like the worst way to get out of an emergency situation intact—but
"playing dead" can be a life-saving behavior.
According to World Atlas, feigning death, or thanatosis,
is most often used as a strategy to avoid becoming a meal. When some
animals feel threatened, their systems become overloaded with fear and
they enter a coma-like state. If a predator is looking for live prey and
finds an apparent—and possibly diseased—corpse instead, it may lose
interest, leaving its would-be victim to live another day.
Some animals do more than flop onto the ground to turn off predators. Opossums sell their performance by releasing a foul odor
during thanatosis that suggests they've been rotting for days. The
southern hog-nose snake uses a similar, smelly defense mechanism while
laying motionless, and has also been known to spit up blood, according
to National Geographic.
Some creatures change their appearance in a tonic state: The undersides
of the fire-bellied frogs of Asia and Europe flush bright orange and
yellow to signal to predators that they're toxic.
Thanatosis is also used as a way to get closer to prey, though such
cases are rare. Livingston’s cichlid, a fish native to Lake Malawi in
East Africa, sinks to the lake bed and waits for unsuspecting fish to
swim by it before going in for the kill. Playing dead can also be used
as a mating strategy. The courtship ritual of the nursery web spider
involves a male spider offering a silk-wrapped insect to a female.
Sometimes the female attempts to snatch away the present and leave the
male behind. To avoid this, the male plays dead and allows himself to be
dragged along with the package as the female tries to run. He revives
himself when the female starts to feed.
Thanatosis is observed
across the animal kingdom, from invertebrates to mammals. It has
provided an evolutionary advantage to many creatures, but it isn't
always a guarantee of survival. An opossum that freezes up at the sight
of an incoming car, for example, is likely to become roadkill.
