From claims that vaccines don't work to manipulated images and deliberately misrepresenting what politicians say, social media is often rife with misinformation. But far from being a recent phenomenon, there is nothing new about so-called "fake news," according to a new paper published in the journal Interface. Researchers argue that misinformation is an inherent and inevitable property of biological systems, from bacteria to birds and human societies.

Misinformation is everywhere
Social communication is a key part of social evolution and collective behavior. It is how an organism learns about its immediate environment without having to rely on risky, trial-and-error or how a bacterium coordinates its behavior with its neighbors to launch a collective defense. However, these social connections can also act as channels for misinformation. While there are many studies on the spread of misinformation in human societies, our understanding of its biological origins is limited.

So the team reviewed decades of empirical and theoretical studies of misinformation in biological systems to see where and how it happens in nature. They found plenty of examples, such as a bird giving a false alarm call, causing the entire flock to flee, an animal population copying outdated migratory paths and even deceptive signaling in bacteria.