‘False feeding’ and aggression in meerkat societies

In cooperative societies, group members are expected to be punished for being lazy and so behaviours that exaggerate an individual's contribution to cooperation may be favoured by selection. In cooperative meerkats, Suricata suricatta, helpers vary in their level of care and, within breeding attempts, helpers can be categorized as ‘generous’ or ‘lazy’. Lazy helpers were more likely to carry food to pups and then eat it themselves and lazy males received more aggression, supporting the idea that ‘false feeding’ could be an adaptive tactic used to exaggerate individual contributions to care. However, our results are also consistent with the more parsimonious idea that ‘false feeding’ occurs when individuals decide not to deliver food items after assessing the needs of pups relative to their own. Group members were not obviously deceived by ‘false feeders’ nor was ‘false feeding’ associated with any obvious benefit. In general, the frequency of ‘false feeding’ increased when the net benefits of feeding pups were likely to be low. The frequency of ‘false feeding’ increased with rising food item value and with decreasing pup dependency on food provided by helpers. Female helpers (which feed pups more than male helpers and preferentially feed female pups) ‘false fed’ less than male helpers and ‘false fed’ male pups more than female pups. We suggest that there is little unequivocal evidence of deception by helpers over contributions to care in cooperative vertebrates and that ‘false feeding’ may occur where helpers adjust their decisions immediately before feeding young or where they are subject to conflicting motivations.