Newly Discovered Animal Behaviors Leave Scientists Speechless: Number Nine Is Unbelievable

The fork-tailed drongo is a 50-gram passerine that follows meerkats and pied babblers around the southern African scrub, watching them dig up food. It gives them genuine alarm calls when a predator appears, which is why they tolerate it.

It also lies. In work published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, biologist Tom Flower found that drongos stole food by direct attack in roughly half of observed cases, and by false alarm call in the other half. The bird waits on a perch until a target is handling something worth taking, then screams. The target drops the food and runs for cover.