Death Feigning Mechanisms, Behavioral Ecology and Implications for Humans

About this book

This book offers the first comprehensive academic treatment of death-feigning behaviour, a widespread yet understudied anti-predator strategy observed across the animal kingdom. Drawing on over two decades of original research, the author presents a multidisciplinary analysis that integrates behavioural ecology, physiology, and molecular biology, while also incorporating insights from engineering, informatics, and medical science.

Death feigning, or thanatosis, has long fascinated naturalists, but only recently has it become the subject of systematic scientific inquiry. This volume reviews its evolutionary significance, taxonomic scope, physiological mechanisms, and genetic underpinnings, with a particular focus on experimental studies in beetles. The book also explores how environmental and internal factors such as temperature, circadian rhythms, and dopamine signalling modulate the expression and duration of immobility.

Importantly, the book extends its scope to human-related implications, examining potential parallels between death-feigning behaviour and human conditions such as PTSD, Parkinson's disease, and trauma-induced freezing. These connections open new avenues for interdisciplinary research in genomic behavioural ecology, a field at the intersection of biology, neuroscience, and medicine.

With detailed case studies, historical context, and forward-looking perspectives, this book is a distinctive and valuable resource for researchers and students in animal behaviour, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, and related disciplines.

Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. History and Definition of Death Feigning
Chapter 3. Overview of Each Taxon
Chapter 4. Factors Affecting Death Feigning
Chapter 5. Death Feigning Syndrome
Chapter 6. Death-Feigning Behavior in Humans and Its Links to Disease
Chapter 7. Future Research on Feigning Death: Prospects and Challenges

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Biography

Takahisa Miyatake has been a Professor at the Faculty of Environment, Life, Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Japan since 2000. His research interests include animal behaviour, behavioural ecology, evolutionary biology, ethology of insects, applied entomology and plant protection. He has been on the editorial board of Population Ecology since 2009 and Ethology since 2010.