The power of deceit

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lucy Cooke sets out to discover why honesty is almost certainly not the best policy, be you chicken, chimp or human being. It turns out that underhand behaviour is rife throughout the animal kingdom, and can be a winning evolutionary strategy. From sneaky squid, to cheating cuckoos, some species will resort to truly incredible levels of deception and deviousness to win that mate, or get more food. And when it comes to social animals like we humans, it turns out that lying, or at least those little white lies, may be the social glue that binds us all together. Lucy heads to the RSPB cliffs at Bempton, with Professor Tim Birkhead to discover why so many bird species appear to be such proficient deceivers, as well as visiting the very crafty ravens at The Tower of London. She speaks to psychologist Richard Wiseman about how to spot when someone is lying, and finds out whether she is any good at it. In fact, can we trust any of what she says in this documentary at all? Presenter Lucy Cooke Producer Alexandra Feachem Main image: Raven Credit: Dr Paul F Donald

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.1	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really. Comedy is a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know, I also know that comedy is really
0:24.3	subjective and everyone has different tastes. So we've got a huge range of comedy on offer from
0:29.8	satire to silly, shocking to soothing, profound to just general pratting about.
0:35.0	So if you fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Hello. Hello, I'm Lucy Cook and I'm the world champion barefoot water skier.
0:51.0	Actually, that's not true. It's a big fat lie. So what do you think? Does that make me a terrible
0:59.6	person? person. honest as the best policy absolutely isn't. Without lying we wouldn't be here today. It's
1:14.7	crucial to our survival.
1:16.9	If we didn't lie, life would be extremely hard. And I mean if you imagine every conversation
1:21.9	you had with everybody, they said what they really thought about you and your life decisions.
1:26.0	It'd be almost unbearable.
1:31.0	Life without lying would be unbearable. Wow, well little white lies at least and it turns
1:38.2	out we're not alone. Survival is a sneaky business and in discovery on the BBC we'll be looking at how and why
1:46.3	natural selection favors those who cheat.
1:50.1	Deception is everywhere animals are deceiving us with camouflage, animals are deceiving us with with behavior. Other humans are deceiving us with lies and sometimes with
1:58.0	things we don't want to believe are lies, but because they sound nice, it's
2:01.6	everywhere. The animal kingdom is crammed full of con artists.
	...

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