Those little liars

Daily Mail:

Little babies are not so innocent after all, it would seem. Infants as young as six months, new research claims, are capable of lying to their doting parents, by crying when they are not truly in pain or distress.

Once the parent has arrived and is giving the loving hugs and cuddles the baby so badly craves, it is reported that it then does its best to prolong this reward by offering fake smiles.

This has led to suggestions that human beings are 'born to lie' and that this is a unique quality of our species.

As someone who has devoted a lifetime to studying human and animal behaviour, I have to report that this is far from being the truth.

Mankind may be the most adept species at telling fibs, but we are far from alone.

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There is much more including similar conduct by chimps.

When my son was about a year old he liked to stand in his crib and look out a window by pulling the curtains back. One day he dropped his bottle and it broke on the window sill. When I went to investigate, he was holding the curtains back and looking at the bottle, but as soon as he saw me he pulled the curtains together and turned around as if nothing was wrong. I was so amused by the act it was hard to stop laughing as I cleaned up the mess.