CHATTY AS A MAGPIE : COMMUNICATION

SENDING DECEPTIVE SIGNALS

I remember my first conscious effort at deception with ghastly clarity, probably because it was such a failure. I had appropriated one of my brother's embossed pencils, whittled his name off it with a knife, and declared it my own. Was I ever dismayed to discover that declaring something to be true doesn't make it so. "It's mine. I didn't carve his name off it," I wailed doggedly, believing this is how lying was conducted, but sensing that something had gone terribly wrong. I was offering up the right words, but nobody was buying them. I had so much to learn.

Young humans are graceless liars. Shortly before my pencil episode, the brother in question had sworn a solemn oath that he had received on Christmas a peppermint stick the size of a fence post. Never mind that we had all spent Christmas together, that no one else recalled a 100-pound candy cane. He would not waver.

Lying takes years of practice to perfect. But it's a worthwhile endeavor. Deception is not a subset of communication. Recall that communication is about manipulating others to your own benefit. So I propose that in the world's first conversation some animal mother called her infant toward a mound bustling with nutritious ants; and in the second, she told the mother next door that the ants were rancid.

When two animals covet the same ant, fruit, or nest hole, it behooves them to use communication (rather than tooth and claw) to deflect each other from it. Thus many animals are adept fibbers. The male barn swallow who discovers his female in the embrace of another male will screech out, "Predator coming!" The cheating hearts will fly apart and take cover. The Formosan squirrel from Taiwan takes a proactive approach with his lies, shouting "Predator!" after his own mating bout. This sends competing males into the trees, delays the female's next mating, and gives the liar's sperm a head start. The burrowing owl of the American West, when it hears a badger approach its den, issues a call that mimics the buzz of a rattlesnake. Sometimes an animal's entire life can become a lie. Male orangutans who aren't able to win their own territory become homeless wanderers. In this case, their bodies stay small and slim - female-looking. These cross-dressers slip past bullying males, and sneak up on unsuspecting females. The result of this physical lie is an impressive reproductive rate.

All those are examples of instinctual or evolved lies. But occasionally an animal (besides the human) seems to make a conscious effort to mislead another. Among baboons, it's the young who seem most devious. One little devil reportedly learned to deflect his mother's wrath by standing erect, eyeing the horizon with terror, and screeching an alarm call. Another youngster specialized in false accusations of child abuse. This prodigy would watch a female baboon dig up a juicy root, then screech, "She hit me!" His mother, fooled into a protective rage, would barrel over and chase the "abuser" away from a hard-earned meal. The chimpanzees are expert liars, too. One report involves a lothario who was leaf-clipping toward a fertile female, and who stuffed the leaf in his mouth when the boss-chimp happened by. I wasn't leaf-clipping! Chimp scholar Frans de Waal reports on a low-ranking male who was displaying his penis to a female when a high-ranking male came on the scene. The would-be-suitor clapped his hands over his crotch, blotting out the message. de Waal also witnessed a male with ambitions for higher office trying to disguise his physical communication. When the chimp spotted the alpha male, instinct spread a "fear grin" across his face. But this self-aware fellow, consciously hoping to conceal his mental state, reached up and squeezed his lips shut over his teeth: I ain't scared of you! Also, chimps of both sexes observe uncharacteristic silence when copulating within earshot of the alpha male.

We humans also do a lot of our deceiving to hide copulations. After all, if a female wants to copulate with a male who is already pair-bonded, why try to fight the first female off when you can just duck behind a shrub with the male? If the other female should appear, you can always squeeze your lips into an expression of innocence. Of course humans lie to protect other important resources, too. In my culture, no employee in his right mind informs the boss-human when he starts looking for a better job. He conceals his personal goals from the boss, who might punish him for disloyalty. Even when I'm hunting and gathering in the aisles of Macy's I endeavor to protect the best resources for myself. I do not shout out, "Hey, ladies! Big rack of Liz Claiborne on sale here! Come on over!"

This is all just the tip of the iceberg of lies. Humans lie all day long. We do it so often it doesn't even require much effort: "I'm fine, thanks." "I don't mind waiting." "What a cute baby." "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." A recent experiment monitored pairs of strangers killing time in a waiting room, and found that, in a human, the lies flow like a babbling brook. In the ten-minute test period, 60 percent of the subjects rattled off an average of three fibs apiece. As you might expect, humans with differing personalities, or differing twenty-third chromosomes, dispense their deceptions differently. Extroverted humans are handier with a lie than are introverts. And while males and females seem equally prolific, the sexes tend to dole out deception for different reasons: Females more often lie in the interest of maintaining social harmony and soothing others; males are more likely to dissemble in a way that brightens their own image.

Researchers have found that spitting out the words is just half the battle in unfurling the successful falsehood. The body is harder to manipulate into a misleading posture. Consider the "Duchenne smile." Named for a scientist who mapped facial muscles, the Duchenne smile is an involuntary expression that involves the mouth, cheeks, and eyes. It turns up when we're genuinely happy. And it's extremely difficult to fake. Most humans can manage the mouth and cheeks, but even professional models have a hard time forcibly tensing the muscles around the eyes without looking like they're about to hit someone. And forget about holding that look. An honest and natural expression can live for about four seconds on the face before it starts to quiver and crumble. Add to that the tension that creeps into a self-conscious voice, and the other twitches and tells that flicker through our faces, hands, and feet, and lying can become a rather strenuous exercise. But from childhood on, we practice doggedly. And we do improve. I can't say that I, personally, being both an introvert and a female, would perform any more convincingly if I stole a pencil today than I did as a child. But I think I've learned to whip out a, "No that didn't hurt," and a "I had a lovely time," at a reassuring tone and pace.

For better or worse, humans are dismal lie detectors. Even our best scientific tools - which measure everything from a teensy change in temperature around the eye, to brain activity patterns, to "micro-expressions" flickering across a fibber's face - even the best miss at least one lie in ten. And human practitioners are far worse at lie-catching, judging from controlled experiments. The public, most police, and even judges only catch a lie about 50 percent of the time, which is the same rate they'd achieve predicting the outcome of a coin toss.

So lying does, in fact, work. Crimes of communication do pay. And although other apes and animals can spin a yarn now and then, no creature on Earth can match the 18 lies-per-hour rate demonstrated by the animal we might call the Unreliable Ape. Humans communicate at a breakneck pace, and pell-mell prevaricating is part of the package.