Many animals use deception to get what they want. Most of these sneaky tactics are instinctual; however, a few creatures engage in tactical deception: They adapt their tricks depending on their goal or audience. Tactical deception involves some sophisticated cognition, and research on the phenomenon often focuses on primates or brainy birds like corvids. Recently, scientists suggested that a different group of animals may be ideal for the study of tactical deception: cephalopods.
For a lot of adults on the autism spectrum, navigating everyday life can feel like stepping into a movie where everyone else got the script ahead of time and you didn't. People seem to know how to move, what to say, and how to react. There are rules, cues, gestures, and tones, most of them unspoken, and yet somehow understood by everyone else. If you're autistic, it can feel like everyone's fluent in a social language you were never taught.