Scratching: sign of personality?

Title: Scratching: sign of personality?
Language: English
Source: Panorama XII (8) August 1960
Subject: Animal behavior
Rights
Fulltext: Dibds that scratch their heads have the bird ex" perts scratching their own heads in confusion. There now appear to be three ways — not two — that birds will scratch their heads, Jack P. Hailman of Bethesda, Md., reports here in the magazine The. Condor. Scientists had just about decided that the two me thods were behavior traits. If an unidentified bird were seen to use the “direct” method, in which the leg is brought directly to the head, he could not be placed in the same family as the bird that used the “indirect” method of bringing the leg over its drooped wing in order to scratch its head. Exceptions to the head scratching rule have been noted, Mr. Hailman says, and now there is a third method: perchscratching. Scratching the head against the perch is widespread enough among the Emberizinae — the bunting family — to justify considering it as a third method, Mr. Hail man suggests. The method seems to be directed to the side of the head and does not seem to be a response to any appa rent outside stimuli. The perch-scratching motions observed by Mr. Hail man are “variable in form, and possibly are primarily the result of individual experience in contrast to the more rigid direct and indirect scratching motions,” he reports. 2 Panorama
pages: 2