Anting (behavior)

The bird may pick up the insects in its bill and rub them on the body (active anting), or the bird may lie in an area of high density of the insects and perform dust bathing-like movements (passive anting).

The insects secrete liquids containing chemicals such as formic acid, which can act as an insecticide, miticide, fungicide, or bactericide.

Alternatively, anting could make the insects edible by removing the distasteful acid, or possibly supplement the bird's own preen oil.

American ornithologist John James Audubon described wild juvenile turkeys that "wallowed" in abandoned ant hills.

Indian ornithologist Salim Ali interpreted an observation by his cousin Humayun Abdulali in the 1936 volume of Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society and included a reference to the Stresemann's paper suggesting that the German term could be translated into English as "anting".

This hypothesis suggests that birds use the chemical secretions that come from ants to control and get rid of parasites in their feathers.

Formic acid is a commonly produced chemical by ants, and it was found to inhibit growth of feather-destroying microorganisms.

[3] However, there is little evidence that chemicals from ants help to remove or deter other parasites such as feather lice and mites.

It is suggested that birds then rub the ants in their feathers to remove the harmful formic acid.

[5] Anting has been compared to human activities such as smoking and other external stimuli that serve no biological purpose and is just for self-stimulation.

Some of the organisms birds use are garlic snails, amphipods, millipedes, dermapterans, caterpillars, grasshoppers, hemipterans, mealworm larvae, and wasps.

Other opportunist ant-eating birds include sparrows, wrens, grouse and starlings.

[9] Similar to anting may be the observed habit some birds show of picking up cigarette butts, sometimes lit, and rubbing themselves with them.