Thank you for posting this. Words are the weapon of my STBX. If only there were bruises where they have inflicted injury.

yes I didn't know either - yet another technique nailed to go with trickle-truthing, darvo and gas-lighting.  Not to mention the first one I learned - gay in denial.

it is good to read a description like that.

Deception is no fun, it's anti-fun.

I went looking in google - animals that practise deception on their own species.  There are not so many examples where it is within a species but there's enough - the praying mantis who eats her partner's head off or a wasp that's eaten by her babies along with a few unfertilised eggs she's laid in for them to eat, a few examples like that.  And widespread there's a certain amount of cannibalism as in our own, in times of starvation.  There were quite a few examples of trickery for gain - females or bananas, of mimicking a female to get past a dominant male and mate with his harem or pretending to have stronger claws to intimidate a rival - but I didn't read of any creature doing it simply for their own entertainment.  

Don't know, I suppose it is possible that there are other species apart from our own where it happens and we just haven't had the eyes to see it yet, but whether they do or don't I still don't like it.

 

Wow, I just learned what "trickle-truth" is.  Wish I'd known that one before.