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Has a non-human animal ever played a trick on you? Something that made you realise how smart they were or gave you an idea of their sense of humour?
The first time I noticed our dog tricking us was aged about 6 months, after a major injury (and 6 weeks of leg scaffolding) on a hind leg from a dog attack - one day we clocked that he'd limped on the wrong leg for sympathy...
Years later, after a baking tray fell near him, he started limping again. But we spotted that he stopped when we weren't looking. Then we walked him down the street and he limped as we approached people, who felt very sorry for him, and stopped once we'd gone past them.
Once after a vaccine this dog lay down, became completely rigid, and screamed if we touched him. We very delicately took him to the out of hours emergency vet, screaming all the way, still rigid. The vet gently checked him over, then after a while, said 'can we try just putting him on the floor, but just talk to me, don't look at him'. We did, and the little twat shook himself off, grinned, and started pottering around the room. She said 'you've been had', cracked up, and charged half the fee.
@amberfirefly Yes, I stayed at a friend's apartment in Paris. During the day, her dog would take all my clothes and things out of my suitcase and spread them around the place, so that, when my friend came home, she'd think I'd been making an awful mess. Then he played the perfect dog in the evening, wagging his tail at me. LOL. What a nightmare week it was! Grrr
@AdamBishop haha, enjoying you being told off I guess! Mine did something similar, used to get very angry at my partner putting the harness on if I was there, so I'd tell him off and give the dog lots of sympathy - apparently completely ok with it when I wasn't around. What kind of dog was it?
@amberfirefly I don't know what kind of dog he was. Years later, I'm still trying to forget the little fella! LOL
@amberfirefly I was staying in Mallorca and I visited a piglet regularly. It had the uttermost fun in launching it's muddy waterbowl at me and was waiting for a good moment. I guess this is play, but very calculated. Also great fun was deliberately (I am sure) writhing it's muddy body against my legs.
On a warm afternoon, I was sitting on the ground and I was drawing with a stone on a slab of concrete. The piglet took a piece and started drawing with their nose.
@wendy and this is why I can't eat pig - they are beyond smart aren't they. I'd love to see a piglet draw, what a privilege to experience that!
@amberfirefly I once had a boyfriend with a family lab. She wasn't allowed on the sofas.
At night, before the family closed off the main sitting room, she would sometimes enter quietly by the second door and wait behind the sofa until the other, main door was shut.
If we had to go back into that room for something, we'd find her on the sofa, snoozing away!
@TheDonsieLass of course :)
@amberfirefly we had a parrot that would quite deliberately poo on people she didn't immediately take to
@amberfirefly Yes. My cat. I was very proud of him
@hunspirillen What did he get up to? :)
@amberfirefly One time he successfully hid from me inside the house when he was supposed to go to the vet. I didn't find him until much later and had to get another appointment. Another time, he knew it was the other cat going to the vet, and it was outside and didn't come when I called. He knew it wasn't him, so he went at fetched the other (less bright) cat for me, lured it inside, and had a good laugh about it.
@amberfirefly My cat showed my husband where in my desk I'm hiding their treats.
@ysegrim @amberfirefly ahhh, I wondered where my wife kept my treats. I'll ask the cat 
@amberfirefly oh yeah this has reminded me of our dog who has both a real cough and, once he learned how well this works to get sympathy from us, a performative cough.
So now if we ignore him sufficiently for him to get impatient with us, he'll start coughing to get attention.
@amberfirefly also the fake cough will sometimes trigger the real cough, which I must confess I find funny
@bright_helpings need to keep an eye on him with that one as he gets older, ours developed a cough that turned out to be sinister, can be so difficult with these smart ones to know what's what when you're used to them playing tricks!
@amberfirefly We had a dog that used to like to play hide and seek. They'd run ahead when we were out for a walk and hide behind a tree. As we approached, she'd jump out and give a little joyful woof. Then she'd run on. She'd get really bouncy if we feigned loud surprise when she jumped out.
@toychicken that's really lovely isn't it :) what kind of dog was she?
@amberfirefly a Jack Russell x Whippet. Apparently it's a common cross in Lincolnshire, where they were used as poachers dogs...
@toychicken what a gorgeous dog 
@amberfirefly thanks, she really was.
@toychicken @amberfirefly One of our cats does something similar: she hides in her paper cave (cardboard box draped with packing paper making a curtain over the opening) and jumps out and pretends to attack us when we walk by. She than bounces around a bit before diving back into her cave. Oh! We're so surprised! Oh my!
@amberfirefly I used to work with a pony. I put him om the place where I could brush him and went to get the bag with his stuff. When I left the saddle room, he was standing right in front of it, waiting for me. He knew the sweets where in that room.
That's why his owner used two ropes when he was in the cleaning place 
Humans seem baffled about how to get my attention and even create whole pathologies to describe it e.g. ADHD whereas Monster Cat just needs to enter my field of vision.
@amberfirefly frequently. With Collies it's almost impossible to avoid being tricked, laughed at, and mocked.
@capnthommo :) the one I've just lost who was an expert trickster was 1/4 shetland sheepdog, 3/4 poodle, these overly smart dogs are quite something
@amberfirefly our dog freshly taken out of a shelter, around 7 months at the time, suddenly brought out a shoe from a hall and started chewing on it in the middle of a living room while I was eating a breakfast. When I got up to take away the shoe and put it back in the hall, he used the time to jump on the table and eat my breakfast. This was clearly planned, normally he was not into chewing shoes ;)
@amberfirefly I watched sheep in Lake District conferring in one end of the pasture than suddenly making a decision, running to a specific spot in the wall separating them from another pasture and scaling it. Clearly planned action. One of the farmers told me, that sheep teach each other how to scale the walls and if they (farmers) identify the one that is so clever as to find the weaknesses in the walls, they have to kill it because otherwise the whole flock would be constantly running away.
@halas wow that's lovely but then awful :( I wonder how much people's idea that livestock animals are daft is just because the smart ones are harmed like this. I had a vet friend who said cows were smarter than horses, I think society's ideas about these animals are all wonky.
@amberfirefly totally. And this experience was significant in moving me towards vegetarianism. Plus I think that significant part of why we see livestock as stupid is that we often encounter those animals while they are brutalized and held in horrible conditions. People are not at their best in that kind of conditions either.
@amberfirefly @halas I can't remember which podcast I heard this on, sorry, but I was listening to a science podcast and they were saying when people had tried testing cows' intelligence they'd got it far too low because they'd been testing cows kept isolated from each other in stimulation free stalls. when they tested cows allowed to live in more natural conditions, interacting with their environment and forming relationships with one another they came out as much more intelligent
@afewbugs @halas of course, makes sense, I think we all get more dopey in stimulation free stalls (offices). I think most 'intelligence' testing across species is massively flawed by the very nature of us just not being able to even imagine the ways that other things might think/communicate, let alone come up with realistic tests of those things - we just test everything relative to ourselves.
My first time on a horse, she'd held the air in her lungs while the saddle was tightened. Once I was on, the saddle rolled over to the side with me on it.
Second try, well-fastened saddle, she walked me into a low-branched tree.
Third attempt seemed to go better, walked around for a while, sped up, even faster, then she stopped suddenly and put her face to the ground. I flew over her head.
I was 13 and found it all wonderfully hilarious and congratulated her for being so smart. She was fine with me after that.
@anomalon love the holding air in the lungs tactic, not sure I'd have thought of that myself!
@amberfirefly Me & significant other, walking down a street. Street has streetlamps, and one of the lamps has 2 seagulls sitting on it.
I could see the seagulls from 200-300m away, watched them closely, and as it was a leisurely stroll, it took at least 2 minutes before we were passing under that particular streetlamp, which is why I believe that what happened & splattered itself across my sleeve was premedidated.
@vic certainly wouldn't put it past them to enjoy invoking those reactions in people :)
I had a cat who thrived on jumping, four legs widely spread, on the books of people reading, after stalking them from behind.
@morayner love the images of the tea-dog and the book-cat :)
@amberfirefly The two cats I grew up with. My boyfriend and I finished a take away dinner. We left the dinner table briefly, leftovers were unwatched. When my boyfriend came back to clear the table, one cat stood on top of the table dropping meat to the floor. We found the other cat running around the house with a big piece in her mouth. She hid the meat at four spots already. These cats hated each other, but at such an opportunity they knew very well how to cooperate.
@elmine !! clever things
@amberfirefly We had a huge American Akita/German shep cross who could open doors. We had to have all the door handles in the house replaced with knobs to stop him getting up to mischief when we were out.
He'd never do it when we were around. We only figured out his little secret because of the paw marks on the door frames and under the handles (sometimes his paw would slip and his claws would scratch the wood).
He was also a devil for playing us off against each other so he'd get fed twice. 
@ApostateEnglishman I particularly like the tricks where they do it completely in secret :)
@amberfirefly I don't know if I'd call it playing a trick, but my bunny Marigold clearly knows how to get my attention and I'm also pretty sure she knows what she's not supposed to do. So she would jump on the sofa and dig/chew at it, I would scold her, and she'd hop away with a little twist of her head, as bunnies do when they're playful. She also sometimes rattles the fence of the enclosure and wait for me to come, and then lie down looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to pet her. Or she'll sit staring at the fridge, or at the drawer I keep the bunny food in...
And both my bunnies know what's going to happen when I put the carrier down near the enclosure. The dreaded VET! Then they won't even come for their favourite food or treats, because they know it's to lure them in. Marigold even once hurled away a piece of apple I'd offered her, showing me very clearly what she thinks about my luring-in strategy!
@jtheseamstress they sound very sweet :)
@amberfirefly My sister's cat used to hide behind a door, meow as if all hell had broken loose, then when someone came looking, cat would jump at them, bounce off, and run. The same cat, when she was supposed to go to the vet I think, mysteriously disappeared, everyone looking for her all over the house, and then finding her in an already searched room, sitting very still among stuffed animals, obviously pretending to be one of them...
@jtheseamstress hiding among the toys is a very lovely image :)
@amberfirefly
Boomer (collie) has a game she plays sometimes where she hits the "pee outside" button at the back door, then runs and situates herself as if she was sleeping elsewhere. On the couch, on her bed, just lounging "asleep" on the floor.
She'll do it 3 or 4 times usually before she gets too excited and breaks the illusion of sleep by wagging.
@silvermoon82 omg I love her
@amberfirefly Returned from a week away to find the goldfish acting like it hadn't been fed. Phoned the friend who'd been looking after it, sure enough the wee chancer had been fed two hours before but it was smart enough to know it hadn't been me.
@emmaaum they are really smart aren't they, I had a goldfish that lived to 17, lots of time to know their bonkers personality 
@amberfirefly This one's primary personality trait was food-seeking :) Definitely smart, that memory like a goldfish thing gets it wrong.
It went to live with kids and a dog so it could have more company. I hope it lived a good long while with them. Would have been about five years old then.
@amberfirefly
We have two dogs, and a couch in the den that fits two humans and a dog, so there's contention for the middle seat.
The dogs both have tricks they use to get the other dog off the couch:
* Ask to go out, other dog will get down and you can deke onto the couch
* pretend to have a treat, other dog will come inveatigate
* if Martian is on the couch, Boomer will roll M's blanket into a ball and lay on it, staring at him.
There's some crows that live in Clissold Park in Stoke Newington, that entertain the customers of the park cafe. :D