by Kevin Burton
As a baseball fanatic growing up I learned that a bunt is a purposely short hit, made to surprise the defense or to move the runners along.
Leave it to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, as it defines the strange things animals sometimes do, to teach me that “bunt” has another meaning and that my precious cats are involved.
The dictionary’s list of animal behavior words follows:
Bunt
We have it on good authority (ahem) that cats are fond of head-butting their people, even going so far to knock books out of their hands while they are reading. What gives?
This behavior is known as bunting. Different animals bunt for a variety of reasons, but experts say that cats do it to either mark a person or other animal with their scent. These same experts say that bunting appears to be social, affectionate behavior, and sometimes is done to get attention.
The word bunt goes back to the 1500s, where it was a dialect term used in England that meant “to butt with the head.” It’s an alteration of the earlier verb butt, which also means “to strike or thrust.”
Butt goes back to the 12th century and was first used not of cats bunting, or rams knocking their heads together, but of a child in the womb that was starting “to stirenn and … to buttenn.”
You are probably more familiar with bunt as a baseball term to refer to pushing or tapping a baseball lightly without swinging the bat. The baseball bunt is a direct descendant of the head-butting bunt.
Binky
Definition: of rabbits: to exhibit an excited state or behavior (such as leaping)
Everyone knows that bunnies hop, but few may be aware that they also binky. The word binky has nothing to do with the trademarked brand of pacifiers. It is used instead (as both noun and verb) to refer to a particular rabbit behavior, usually a big hop or jump and especially one involving a twist of the body.
There’s some debate over whether binkying is an adaptation of predator-avoidance behavior that enables the rabbit to quickly change direction while running away, or a sign of a playful, contented rabbit. And there’s plenty of debate over where the word binky comes from: theories include both Spanish and Scottish, among other origins.
Our earliest evidence for the word is from a July 1995 post to the listserv PETBUNNY, which kept an informal dictionary of terms for rabbit owners. Binky is defined there as “A leap in the air, usually with a 180 degrees turn while in the air, and a bewildered expression upon landing.” It seems to have been coined by the post’s author, Dana Krempels of the Miami House Rabbit Society.
Flehmen
Definition: of mammals: to inhale with the mouth open and upper lip curled to facilitate exposure of the vomeronasal organ to a scent or pheromone.
If you’ve spent any time with horses, you may have noticed that they occasionally attempt something similar to the social media fad of “duckface”: they stretch their heads forward and curl their upper lip up so far that it covers their nose. They are not waiting for you to take a pic of them for Instagram (as far as we know), however—they are flehmening.
Flehmening is actually a way of smelling or scenting the air, and is not peculiar to horses: other ungulates exhibit the response, as well as cats, elephants, and bats. Lifting the upper lip gives them access to the vomeronasal organ on the roof of their mouth (other animals use vomeronasal organs as well—snakes particularly), which contains chemoreceptors that help them find mates and investigate other smells in their environment.
Flehmen (also a noun) comes into English directly from German, where it means “to curl the upper lip.” The German verb was coined in the 1930s by zoologists describing the phenomenon, but it didn’t trot into English until the 1970s, where it was first used not of horses, but giraffes.
Pronk
Definition: a kind of leaping gait (as of a deer, gazelle, or other quadruped)
Pronk was borrowed from Afrikaans (in which language it means “to show off”) in the late 19th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The word also functions as a verb, and has been occasionally spotted in extended use.
Zoomies
Definition: rapid running, tail chasing, and other energetic and excited behavior in animals and especially dogs that usually indicates happiness, excitement, etc. and lasts for a brief period of time.
Sometimes, all pets want to do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom until they boom-boom into a door jamb or your leg or something. Am I right?
This behavior has come to be known, in the parlance of our times, as zoomies (and often the zoomies). Zoomies is almost certainly formed from the verb zoom, which first appeared in English in the late 1800s, and is imitative—mimicking the sound of what it describes, i.e. something moving very fast.
Wallow
Definition: to roll oneself about in a lazy, relaxed, or ungainly manner
As our definition attests, there are many different flavors of wallowing. We’ll allow, for example, one may wallow in self-pity—figuratively “rolling oneself” about in a lazy manner. But for hogs and other porcine fellows, “lazy” may ring hollow.
Pigs wallow because, having fewer sweat glands than humans do, the mud keeps them cool and prevents them from getting sunburn. The word wallow is an ancient one in English, going back to the Old English wealwian and beyond, and is also used as a noun for muddy areas used for wallowing, or depressions formed by or as if by the wallowing of animals.
Brumation
Definition: a state or condition of sluggishness, inactivity, or torpor exhibited by reptiles and amphibians during winter or extended periods of low temperature.
Not all animal behaviors are as active as binkying and bunting. Case in point, the sleepy state undergone by turtles, toads, et al, known as brumation.
Brumation is one of the few words in English that we can trace back to its point of creation, coined as it was by the American zoologist Wilbur W. Mayhew in a 1965 article titled “Hibernation in the Horned Lizard Phrynosoma m’calli” published in the journal Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology. In it, he writes, “I propose the term brumation (from bruma, L. winter) to indicate winter dormancy in ectothermic vertebrates that demonstrate physiological changes which are independent of body temperature.”
While animals in true hibernation stop drinking water and fall into a deep sleep from which they can’t be awakened, those in brumation still stir occasionally to drink water. Mayhew thought that, given the differences between hibernation and what his reptiles did, it would be best to create a new term.
Brumation is brought on by cold temperatures, but too much heat can cause an animal to go into another torpid state called estivation. As brumation can trace its lineage back to the Latin word for winter, so estivation traces its lineage back to the Latin word for summer.
Anting
Definition: bird behavior in which ants are rubbed on the feathers to obtain chemicals (such as formic acid) from the ants.
We all have our beauty and hygiene routines, and birds are no different. Many avian species, quail for example, are known to take dust baths to maintain their feathers by absorbing excess oils. Anting is a behavior not so succinctly explained.
Some scientists theorize that the formic acid found in ants acts as a fungicide, bactericide, or as an insect repellent. Others believe it prevents their feathers from drying out. Whatever the reason birds—including species of grackle, owl, crow, turkey, and many more—engage in anting.
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