tonic immobility
Sign in to saveAlso known as playing dead, feigning death, playing possum, thanatosis, animal hypnosis, Immobility Response, Tonic, apparent death
behavior in which animals take on the appearance of being dead
Research
1,355 papers- Tonic Immobility as a Defensive Trauma Response to Rape: Bridging Public Health and Law.Violence against women · 2024
- Tonic immobility as a survival, adaptive response and as a recovery mechanism.Progress in brain research · 2022
- Tonic immobility and phenomenal consciousness in animals: a review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025
- Neurochemical anatomy of dorsal and tonic immobility responses.Pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior · 2022
- Tonic immobility triggered by COVID-19-related trauma is associated with long-term PTSD symptoms.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2024
via PubMed
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- animal behavior
- Subclass of
- freeze response
- Named after
- Thanatos
- Image
- ApusApusKlausRoggel02.jpg
Show 2 more facts
- different from
- faked death
- Commons category
- Apparent death
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~21 min read
Encyclopedic overview
A Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) playing dead A barred grass snake (Natrix helvetica) playing dead
Apparent death is a behavior in which animals take on the appearance of being dead. It is an immobile state most often triggered by a predatory attack and can be found in a wide range of animals from insects and crustaceans to mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Apparent death is separate from the freezing behavior seen in some animals.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “tonic immobility” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.