page_title: Self-anointing in animals
section_title: Birds
hierarchical_section_title: Self-anointing in animals / Birds
caption_attribution_description: English: Black Drongo Dicrurus macrocercus in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
context_page_description: Self-anointing in animals, sometimes called anointing or anting, is a behaviour whereby a non-human animal smears odoriferous substances over themselves. These substances are often the secretions, parts, or entire bodies of other animals or plants. The animal may chew these substances and then spread the resulting saliva mixture over their body, or they may apply the source of the odour directly with an appendage, tool or by rubbing their body on the source.
  The functions of self-anointing differ between species, but it may act as self-medication, repel parasites, provide camouflage, aid in communication, or make the animal poisonous.
context_section_description: The use of millipedes in self-anointing by birds has been reported for the strong-billed woodcreeper (Xiphocolaptes promeropirhyncus) in Belize, the little shrike-thrush (Colluricincla megarhyncha parvula) in Australia, the black-throated shrikebill (Clytorhynchus nigrogularis) and the jungle mynah (Acridotheres fuscus) in the Fiji Islands, the European robin (Erithacus rubecula) in England and the grey-winged trumpeter (Psophia crepitans) and the pale-winged trumpeter (P. leucoptera) in northern South America.
  In one study, mothballs (which contain napthalene) were placed in a flowerbed.  A common grackle picked one out, extended its left wing and rubbed the mothball up and down the length of the shaft of each of the secondary feathers.  The grackle went on to rub the mothball over its secondary coverts on the ventral side and onto the propatagium area.  The grackle then repeated the same rubbing actions on its right wing.  The entire rubbing behaviour lasted approximately 10 minutes. European starlings also performed a similar behaviour with mothballs.
  During  anting, birds rub insects on their feathers, usually ants, which secrete liquids containing chemicals such as formic acid.  These can act as an insecticide, miticide, fungicide, bactericide, or to make the insects edible by removing the distasteful acid. It possibly also supplements the bird's own preen oil.  Although it has been suggested that anting acts as a way of reducing feather parasites such as mites or in controlling fungi or bacteria, there has been little convincing support for any of the theories.  Some cases of anting involved the use of millipedes or puss moth caterpillars, and these too are known to release powerful defensive chemicals.
  Another suggested function, based on observation of blue jays, is that the bird makes the insects edible, by discharging the harmful acid onto their feathers. The birds were found to show anting behaviour only if the ants had a full acid sac, and with subjects whose acid sacs had been experimentally removed, the behaviour was absent.
  Finally, it has also been suggested that anting is related to feather moulting.  The metabolic products of the ants may soothe skin irritated by unusually rapid feather replacement.  However, the correlation may also be attributed to the greater activity of ants in summer.
caption: A black drongo in a typical "anting" posture
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2018:01:09 18:36:06", "Image ExifOffset": "168", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "306", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7484", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "517"}