Ah you made this click for me. I had always failed to understand why squirrels would do this. Faking hiding a nut doesn’t feel like a productive use of energy e

Ah you made this click for me. I had always failed to understand why squirrels would do this. Faking hiding a nut doesn’t feel like a productive use of energy even if other squirrels are watching. But if it is mutually understood that all squirrels are going to pretend to bury nuts n% of the time, it becomes less valuable for other squirrels to spy on you to begin with! I wonder if the squirrel burying meta changes across generations. That is, when squirrels feel confident that nobody would bother spying, they waste less time pretending to bury nuts, which over time leads to more advantage from spying again, and thus requiring more deception.