When someone tells you where you stand in a pecking order, they are allocating you a place in a hierarchy. You may not be happy about it, but at least you know your place! Dominance hierarchies are ...

American Thanksgiving and turkeys are forever, inextricably linked together. Turkey may very well have been served at the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth more than 400 years ago, and today the ...

Dominance hierarchies were first described in chickens a century ago by a Norwegian zoologist who coined the term 'pecking order.' Since then researchers have examined the intricacies of conflict and ...

The term pecking order came about in the 1920s from the writings of Norway's Thorleif Schjelderup on his study of social order among hens. A hen pecks another who is lower on her social scale without ...

A team of international researchers has discovered how birds manage to fly in such perfect formation. The scientists found that through a complex hierarchy of leadership, each bird contributes to ...

Gentle pecking of feathers where the recipient is calm and not reacting is a normal social behaviour of birds and should never worry anyone. But in situations where the pecking is more violent, and ...