Animal Examples
Some examples of animals that are known to cheat include: cleaner fish, social insects, ungulates, and birds. Cleaner fish have a mutualistic relationship, a cleaning symbiosis, with their clients. The cleaners eat ectoparasites off their clients. The clients benefit from being cleaned, and the cleaners benefit from acquiring food. However, some cleaners cheat by eating tissue, scales, and mucus off their clients instead of only ectoparasites. This could be detrimental to the clients and possibly turn the mutualistic relationship into commensalism or parasitism.
As for social insects, such as bees, ants, and wasps, the queen is the only individual that is supposed to reproduce. In some cases, cheating workers reproduce also. This disrupts the altruistic relationship between the queen and the workers.
Vigilance is essential for many colonial animals. The animals on the outside of the group will be vigilant, while those on the inside forage. The animals within the group also monitor each other’s vigilance. A cheater may emerge in groups with vigilant animals. The cheater might try to forage the entire time, while the rest of the group switches between foraging and being vigilant.
Read more about this topic: Cheating (biology)
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