The comfort behaviour of adélie and other penguins
Abstract
[Comfort movements include the behaviours of shaking, stretching, cleaning, preening, and washing. These were described and analyzed for Adelie Penguins. The function for some movements such as oil-preening was difficult to determine and could only be hypothesized. Cleaning, preening, washing, head-shaking, and sneezing function in the care of body surfaces and are responses to the presence of irritants or foreign material on surfaces. Stretching and other shaking movements may function to help prepare muscles and peripheral circulation for activity. Ruffle-shakes may function to dissipate heat and arrange plumage. Some movements of oil-preening and some areas of the body preened are performed in a predictable sequence ordered according to functional relationships among the different movements. Some movements are normally performed only after certain others have been performed. Bathing in penguins is a socially facillitated behaviour. The pattern of Adelie bathing is determined largely as an anti-predator strategy. Adelie, African, and Humboldt Penguins perform the same repertoire of comfort movements. The one exception is that both spheniscids allopreen but Adelies do not. The motor patterns of all other movements except for two are the same for the three species. The two spheniscids perform the jaw-stretch and the both-wings-stretch differently than does the pygoscelid. The comfort movement repertoires of several other penguin species were compared to these. Their repertoir…
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Contact with visitors may be threatening for little penguins, as reduced preening in the water suggests, since preening is a comfort behaviour more likely to occur when animals are not threatened.
“The reduced preening in the water also suggests that contact with visitors may be threatening for little penguins since preening behaviour is a comfort behaviour that is more likely to occur when animals are not threatened [47,48,49,50].”
From Effect of Covering a Visitor Viewing Area Window on the Behaviour of Zoo-Housed Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor) (2020) · cites this paper as [48]
Comfort behaviours such as preening are generally more likely to occur when the animal is not threatened.
“Presumably, comfort behaviours such as preening are generally more likely to occur when the animal is not threatened [19,48,49,50].”
From Effects of Regulating Visitor Viewing Proximity and the Intensity of Visitor Behaviour on Little Penguin (Eudyptula minor) Behaviour and Welfare (2019) · cites this paper as [19]
Behavioural responses to threats, which may be indicative of fear, in penguins commonly include immobility, retreat or avoidance, vigilance, huddling, reduced preening and aggression.
“Behavioural responses to threats, which may be indicative of fear, in penguins commonly include immobility, retreat or avoidance, vigilance, huddling, reduced preening and aggression [7,8,19,20,21,22,23].”
From Effects of Regulating Visitor Viewing Proximity and the Intensity of Visitor Behaviour on Little Penguin (Eudyptula minor) Behaviour and Welfare (2019) · cites this paper as [19]
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- Authors
- Ainley, D. G.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Ainley, David G.
- ORCID
- Ainley, David G.
- Venue
- Behaviour
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 1974
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 1-2
- Pages
- 16-50
- ISSN
- 0005-7959 (ISSN-L)
- 1568-539X
- OpenAlex
- W1989422318
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2016: 1 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 3.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Avian ecology and behavior
- Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Keywords
- Pygoscelis adeliae, comfort behavior, preening, head shaking, antipredator behavior, social facilitation, allopreening, seabird behavior, Humboldt penguin, African penguin, albatrosses, grooming, sneezing
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