Display (zoology)
set of ritualized behaviours that enable an animal to communicate to other animals about specific stimuli
Display behaviour is a set of ritualized behaviours that enable an animal to communicate to other animals (typically of the same species) about specific stimuli. Such ritualized behaviours can be visual, but many animals depend on a mixture of visual, audio, tactical and chemical signals. Evolution has tailored these stereotyped behaviours to allow animals to communicate both conspecifically and interspecifically which allows for a broader connection in different niches in an ecosystem. It is connected to sexual selection and survival of the species in various ways. Typically, display behaviour is used for courtship between two animals and to signal to the female that a viable male is ready to mate. In other instances, species may make territorial displays, in order to preserve a foraging or hunting territory for its family or group. A third form is exhibited by tournament species in which males will fight in order to gain the 'right' to breed. Animals from a broad range of evolutionary hierarchies avail of display behaviours - from invertebrates such as the simple jumping spider to the more complex vertebrates like the harbour seal.
In animals
Invertebrates
Insects
Communication is important for animals throughout the animal kingdom. For example, since female praying mantids are sexually cannibalistic, the male typically uses a cryptic form of display.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Display (zoology)” as set of ritualized behaviours that enable an animal to communicate to other animals about specific stimuli. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q778384. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Display (zoology)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.