Pecking is the action of a

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

using their

beak The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. A beak is used for eating, preening, manipulating objects, killing prey, fighting, probing for food ...

to search for food or otherwise investigate an object or area by tapping it. Pecking can also be used by a bird to attack or fight another bird. Pecking is frequently observed in

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

s and other

poultry Poultry () are domesticated birds kept by humans for their eggs, their meat or their feathers. These birds are most typically members of the superorder Galloanserae (fowl), especially the order Galliformes (which includes chickens, quails, a ...

, and in

pigeons Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...

.Harris Philip Zeigler, Ralf Jäger, and Adrian G. Palacios, "Sensorimotor mechanisms and pecking in the pigeon", in Harris Philip Zeigler and Hans-Joachim Bischof, ''Vision, Brain, and Behavior in Birds'' (1993), p. 265. Pecking is typically accomplished by movement of the

neck The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...

. Certain birds, particularly

woodpeckers Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. M ...

, engage in a specialized kind of pecking, using their beak to drill holes in

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

s in order to find insects under the

bark Bark may refer to: * Bark (botany), an outer layer of a woody plant such as a tree or stick * Bark (sound), a vocalization of some animals (which is commonly the dog) Places * Bark, Germany * Bark, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland Arts, ...

. Woodpeckers also engage in a kind of pecking called drumming, a less-forceful type of pecking that serves to establish territory and attract mates. Woodpeckers drum on various reverberatory structures on buildings such as gutters, downspouts, chimneys, vents and aluminium sheeting. The phrase,

pecking order In biology, a dominance hierarchy (formerly and colloquially called a pecking order) is a type of social hierarchy that arises when members of animal social animal , social groups interact, creating a ranking system. A dominant higher-ranking i ...

, referring to the hierarchical system of social organization was coined by

Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe (12 November 1894 in Kristiania – 8 June 1976 in Oslo) was a Norwegian zoologist and comparative psychologist. He was the first person to describe a pecking order of hens. Career Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe was at the ag ...

in 1921, in reference to the expression of dominance in

chickens The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

by behaviors including pecking. Schjelderup-Ebbe noted in his 1924 German-language article that "defense and aggression in the hen is accomplished with the

". This emphasis on pecking led many subsequent studies on fowl behaviour to use it as a primary observation, however, it has been noted that

rooster The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

s tend to leap and use their claws in conflicts.Rajecki, D.W. (1988). Formation of leap orders in pairs of male domestic chickens. Aggressive Behavior, 14(6): 425-436

References

See also