History
The first description of a displacement activity (though not the use of the term) is probably by Julian Huxley in 1914. The subsequent development of research on displacement activities was a direct consequence of Konrad Lorenz's works on instincts. However, the first mentions of the phenomenon came in 1940 by the two Dutch researchers Nikolaas Tinbergen and Adriaan Kortlandt.
Tinbergen in 1952 noted, for example, that ‘two skylarks engaged in furious combat suddenly peck at the ground as if they were feeding’, or birds on the point of mating may suddenly begin to preen themselves. Tinbergen adopted the term ‘displacement activities’ because the behaviour appeared to be displaced from one behavioural system into another.
Read more about this topic: Displacement Activity
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