The thief is crazy ... exempt?

Tam Flower tracked and recorded the warning calls of 100 drongos and documented how the drongos continue to fool the meerkats and steal their food

Anyone who has visited the nature reserves of Africa, especially in the south, has come to know and appreciate the turbulent family life of the meerkat. Suricata suricatta is a small mammal from the mongoose family that lives in the tropical regions of southern Africa. The meerkat lives in large family groups and its diet includes: insects, reptiles, bird eggs and which will be found on the ground.

The meerkat has many enemies, so when the family goes out to "graze" there is always a sentinel whose job it is to warn of danger, the warning is given by a sharp bark that causes everyone to take cover.

Whoever raised his head to the height of the tree branches could see the black bird sitting on a protruding branch and waiting for.... opportunity? The Drongo is a songbird found in the African savannahs, its size is the size of a nightingale, its main food is arthropods and small reptiles which it hunts from a vantage point on a high branch, its color is black and it is easy to recognize because of its forked tail, the Drongo is considered an "African Nightingale" the locals claim that "its song is The most beautiful of all African birds"? I've never heard him sing...

I have heard how it makes warning sounds against predators or raptors, many species of mammals and birds have unique calls that warn their own kind - as well as the other animals in the environment of dangers / predators, when you can learn and identify who is warning and in the case of monkeys there are also unique warning calls for each enemy, For example: a call to warn against a tiger sounds (also to us) different from a warning against a snake, small monkey species that are in treetops have another call to warn against eagles.

Back to the drongos and their meerkats, they have common enemies, mainly hawks, falcons and eagles, so the former have learned to respond to the latter's warning calls, in many observations I have seen how a search and hunt for a lizard or a large insect takes place and immediately after "neutralizing" the hunter, a warning is heard, following which the meerkat family flees to the burrows, in cases no. I tried to look for and identify the danger, in vain.

In almost all the cases where I didn't recognize the danger, I saw how immediately after the meerkats disappeared, a drongo appeared and chomped on the prey that remained visible on the ground.... It is worth noting that the meerkat hunts and neutralizes scorpions or lizards, which for the drongo are a challenge because of their size or sting, so when such prey is neutralized, the feast is easier, the meerkat's escape from an enemy that was not there and the appearance of the drongo was a puzzle. For as already said they both have common enemies.

Mimicry among animals in general and birds in particular is known even among non-birders, we all know the mimicry of parrots, in America there is a bird whose popular name is "mimicry" and the same is true among mammals as the saying "monkey follows man" is well known. Crows in rural England have learned to imitate the ringing of church bells, in urban centers they imitate the sounds of engines and "sirens", the "mimicry" in America imitates the sound of a train horn. About 20% of songbirds successfully imitate the sounds in their environment, researchers are looking for a reason and an advantage for the talent Legislation.

Now the riddle is clear, a clear advantage to the drongo's ability to imitate was found by Tom Flower, a doctoral student from Cambridge University, who publishes in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Results of a long follow-up after the incident in the Kalahari desert, according to his observations the drongo "surfs" in the meerkat By giving a warning call even when there is no enemy around, so when the meerkats run away the drongo comes down and enjoys a juicy meal.

But it turns out that in many places the meerkat families have learned to ignore the drongo's warning call. To this the drongos responded by sounding a (successful) imitation of the "meerkat" warning call! Of course, after a number of times, the meerkats learned the difference between the imitation and the real call and stopped running away, and once again the drongos learned to make a warning call of another species: monkeys, pearls and others.

Tam Fluer tracked and recorded the warning calls of 100 drongos and documented how the drongos continue to fool the meerkats and steal their food.

Since the meerkats do not know Aesop's story about the boy who called "wolf wolf", they continue to run away every time the warning call is heard, it is possible that if the boy knew how to imitate the voice of an adult, the sheep in the story would have been saved.