With all its attendant weaknesses, the current popularity of drawing parallels between the findings of animal ethologists and human behaviour may well prove to be a fruitful aid to our understanding of the human condition. I would like to take one rather commonplace example: It frequently happens in ethology laboratories and poultry farms that a group of hens meet each other in a fairly confined space for the first time. In the case of grown birds which are strangers, a series of single combats is engaged in, with each bird pairing off with every other in a way which to the casual glance appears random. Actually, what is developing is a ‘peck-order’ in which the leader of the flock can peck any other hen without herself being pecked, the second hen can peck all but the top hen, and the rest are arranged in a descending hierarchy ending with a hen which is pecked by all, but pecks no one. The amount of aggressiveness shown in the contests varies with different individuals, but once the peck order has been determined, pecking starts to decrease, as individuals recognize their superiors, and eventually simply raising or lowering the head can be sufficient to register dominance or submission respectively.