page_title: Allelomimetic behavior
section_title: In chickens and roosters
hierarchical_section_title: Allelomimetic behavior / In chickens and roosters
caption_attribution_description: This rooster was found running in the street. Relocated to a farm.
context_page_description: Allelomimetic behavior or allomimetic behavior is a range of activities in which the performance of a behavior increases the probability of that behavior being performed by other nearby animals. Allelomimetic behavior is sometimes called contagious behavior and has strong components of social facilitation, imitation, and group coordination. It is usually considered to occur between members of the same species. An alternate definition is that allelomimetic behavior is a more intense or more frequent response or the initiation of an already known response, when others around the individual are engaged in the same behavior. It is often referred to as synchronous behavior, mimetic behavior, imitative behavior, and social facilitation.
  Allelomimetic behavior is displayed in all animals and can occur in any stage of life, but usually starts at a young age. This behavior will continue throughout life, especially when an individual is living in a large group that emphasizes group cohesion. Cohesion is seen as a prerequisite for group living, with synchronous activity being crucial for social cohesion.
context_section_description: Allelomimetic behaviour can often be affected by domestication and lead to the evolution of new social behaviours, or subtle changes in current social behaviors.  It is thought that domestication would reduce the level of allelomimetic behavior in animals due to the removal of many important factors that create mimicries such as predation, food pressures and competition between species members. Since there is no need to worry about possible predation or a lack of resources in a domesticated environment, the allelomimetic behaviors seen in non-domesticated species evolved out and the adaptation to domestication became the new normal. Mimetic behaviors that once incorporated anti-predator strategies or mating strategies became unnecessary and the use of these behaviors decreased. An experiment was conducted by Eklund and Jensen using an ancestor of all domesticated chickens, the red junglefowl, and a domesticated breed, the white leghorn.  They showed that allelomimetic behavior was more prominent and used more frequently in the non-domesticated red junglefowl compared to the white leghorn, most likely due to the chance of predation, starvation, and the lack of shelter playing a role in producing these allelomimetic behaviors. Total synchronization only occurred in both species during comforting behaviors such as perching and dust bathing. In activities outside of comfort behavior, there was little mimetic behavior in the domesticated white leghorn and inter-individual distances presented by the chickens during perching was larger than the non-domesticated species. Perching in the red junglefowl occurred more frequently and was more mimetic than in the white leghorn. The social behavior of the red junglefowl was also affected by allelomimetism, where behaviors such as feather pecking were more synchronized than in the white leghorn. A difference in feeding synchrony also appeared in females versus males. Females were more likely to mimic other females' eating behaviors compared to a mixed-sex group or males mimicking males.
caption: The domesticated white leghorn rooster, a species of rooster used in Eklund and Jensen's experiment
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