Insects have many techniques for escaping predators. They fly, sting, use camouflage, or contain poisons. The Indian stick insect (Carausius morosus) has none of these skills so it plays dead.

John Skelhorn at Newcastle University wondered if feigning death actually works. Stick insects taste good when they’re alive but taste terrible when dead. Do predators always avoid dead-looking critters? Skelhorn experimented with stick insects and one of their predators to find out.

First, here’s what a living stick insect looks like.

For predators, Skelhorn chose chickens who’d never seen a stick insect — 90 chicken chicks divided into three test groups.

Naive chicks who’d never eaten a dead stick insect were willing to approach those playing dead. However, any chick that had tasted a dead one, moved back and refused to touch the pretender. (Eeeeww! They wiped their beaks.)

Does an insect playing dead live longer? Yes, if the predators have experience.

Read more at Scientific American The Art of Playing Dead and the original study published in Current Biology.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)