Misinformation may feel like the defining challenge of the digital age, but according to a new scientific review, humans are far from the first—or only—organisms to grapple with misleading signals, false alarms, and deceptive communication.
From bacteria to birds to the cells of our own immune system, a sweeping new study argues that misinformation permeates biological life at every scale.
Published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface by researchers at Cornell University, the paper offers the first systematic “natural history” of misinformation across the biological world.
According to researchers, misinformation is not an evolutionary glitch or a modern pathology—it is an unavoidable consequence of how organisms communicate.
“The transmission and use of misinformation is widespread in biological systems spanning levels of organization,” the researchers write. “The production and transmission of misinformation is probably an inevitable property that inherits from fundamental constraints on biological communication systems, rather than a pathology that lies apart from the normal functioning of such systems.”
That finding reframes misinformation not as a uniquely human failing amplified by social media, but as a deeply rooted biological phenomenon—one that shapes everything from how bird flocks react to danger to how immune systems sometimes attack the body they’re meant to protect.
A New Scientific Lens on False Signals
Researchers pulled together decades of studies across ecology, evolution, information theory, and network biology to argue that misinformation should be studied as a cross-cutting biological process.
By showing how false or misleading signals spread through groups of organisms, the researchers propose a theoretical framework that may help scientists better understand—and potentially control—the flow of misinformation in systems as varied as animal societies, microbial colonies, and human communication networks.
To understand this broader phenomenon, researchers offer a precise definition for what constitutes misinformation.
“We define a misinformative message as any message—i.e. a signal, cue or other stimulus—that causes a biological agent receiving the message to shift its beliefs about the state of reality away from the true state of reality,” the researchers write.
In essence, researchers contend that misinformation happens whenever an organism makes a worse decision because of information it got from someone—or something—else.
Seen through this lens, the researchers weave together a vivid set of examples that reveal how misinformation takes root, spreads through groups, and alters the behavior of living systems.
Birds, Bacteria, and the Biology of Being Wrong
One of the clearest examples comes from birds’ alarm calls. When one individual mistakenly—or deliberately—sounds a warning, entire flocks can erupt into panicked escape flights. These “false alarm cascades,” the study notes, exemplify how misinformation can “propagate through a bird flock in the absence of a true threat.”
Some species even exploit this tendency. Great tits, for instance, frequently produce alarm calls when no predator is present, a behavior the authors describe as a form of deception, “as a means of usurping food resources” from others in feeding groups. According to prior research, “two-thirds of the alarm calls produced by great tits in feeding aggregations are false alarms.”
At a completely different biological scale, bacteria also spread misinformation. Microbial communities use chemical signaling systems, such as quorum sensing, to coordinate group behavior.
However, some strains cheat. Species like E. coli and Salmonella “import signaling molecules used by other bacteria… interfer[ing] with the ability of other species to accurately perceive cell density” and thereby gaining a competitive advantage.
This is not metaphorical misinformation—it’s biochemical deception.
When the Body Lies to Itself
Researchers highlight that misinformation doesn’t just occur between organisms. It can also happen within them.
The mammalian immune system, the authors argue, is a prime example of a biological communication network that can go awry. Immune cells use chemical messages to recruit reinforcements when they detect pathogens. However, sometimes those signals are triggered in error.
“When initial immune responses are misdirected at host tissue, ensuing cytokine‑induced inflammation can be viewed as a large‑scale misinformation cascade that results in the body’s defence system attacking its own tissue,” the researchers write.
This reframes autoimmune diseases—from rheumatoid arthritis to inflammatory bowel disease—as consequences of an internal misinformation problem, in which the immune system mistakes its own cells for invaders.
Why Misinformation Arises: Chance, Misinterpretation, and Distortion
Researchers also develop a theoretical framework to categorize the ways misinformation emerges in biological networks. Sometimes, organisms simply encounter rare or ambiguous signals—what the paper calls being “misinformed by chance.”
More often, misinformation stems from misinterpretation. Because organisms can only approximate how messages relate to real-world states, they rely on “heuristic decoding functions.” When these are wrong or oversimplified, they can lead to systematic errors.
In social groups, misinformation can be amplified through feedback loops. The study describes how “collective distortion” and “multistability” allow systems to fall into stable but incorrect states—what humans might call echo chambers—where large groups behave in ways entirely “uncorrelated with the true state of the environment.”
In one model highlighted in the paper, animals relying too heavily on social cues can become locked into maladaptive behaviors. When this happens, “individuals remain locked in the wrong state because they rely on observing others who are, themselves, in the wrong state.”
It is a vivid parallel to misinformation cascades in human networks.
A Biological Blueprint for Understanding Misinformation
Although researchers avoid simplistic analogies to social media misinformation, they argue that lessons from biology may illuminate human communication systems. Processes such as message mutation (akin to rumors distorting as they spread) and loss of context (as in de-contextualized social posts) have clear analogs in animal behavior.
“There are intriguing parallels between misinformation dynamics in the biological systems discussed in this review and those that occur in human social systems,” researchers note.
However, they emphasize caution. Human cognition and technology introduce complexities not found in most biological systems. Nevertheless, by searching for underlying principles that govern misinformation across all types of communication networks, researchers may gain new insight into how and why misinformation persists—and how it might be mitigated.
Could Controlling Misinformation Help Control Biological Systems?
One of the study’s most intriguing implications touches on biotechnology and future therapeutic strategies.
If misinformation is inherent to biological communication, researchers suggest, then deliberately manipulating misinformative signals could offer new ways to control biological processes.
The paper highlights that “therapeutics that aim to disrupt the perception of quorum-sensing signals… subvert bacterial decision-making” by altering how microbes interpret messages about population density.
This opens the door to anti-infective strategies that work not by killing pathogens, but by confusing them.
Similarly, understanding how immune cells regulate false alarms may inspire therapies that tamp down autoimmune inflammation by controlling “the likelihood that individuals in a collective will transmit misinformation” within the body’s own defense system.
These parallels suggest a potential future in which misinformation science influences medicine as much as it influences media policy.
Ultimately, the authors argue that misinformation is not an aberration but a fundamental property of communication in complex systems.
By treating misinformation as a biological phenomenon rather than a uniquely human failure, the study calls for a new interdisciplinary science—one that spans ecology, evolution, neuroscience, network theory, and information science.
It’s a bold reframing that suggests misinformation is older, deeper, and more universal than previously imagined. And it highlights a surprising possibility: to understand—and perhaps combat—misinformation in human societies, researchers may need to look far beyond the internet and into the natural world.
“We should expect to find socially transmitted misinformation in virtually any biological system in which messages are transmitted from one agent to another,” researchers conclude. “The class of such systems is vast. It includes immune systems, brains, biofilms and other cellular collectives, persistent animal groups and ephemeral aggregations, and indeed our own social networks and communication systems.”
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com