Allelomimetic behavior or allomimetic behavior is a range of activities in which the performance of a behavior increases the probability of that behavior being performed by other nearby animals. Allelomimetic behavior is sometimes called contagious behavior and has strong components of social facilitation, imitation, and group coordination. It is usually considered to occur between members of the same species.
Lindsay refers to the imitative or copycat behavior in social animals. It can occur in any species at any stage in their life. Even if a dog can sense no danger, if an owner "[sits up] alertly and with pose in [their] voice [says] 'What's that? Who's there?', the dog will mimic the owner's attitude." According to Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog, "puppies first do this at about five weeks of age" Adult dogs and cats who live together tend to sleep, eat and play together. These are examples of allelomimetic behavior
Other examples in nature include collective decisions in social insects, such as pheromone-based path selection in ants, where the choice of only one path drives all the workers towards the same food source, or the choice of a single aggregation site by cockroaches. Examples in vertebrates include schooling fishes and switching between behaviours by sheep.
Function
Group cohesion: Social animals often benefit by behaving in a simailar manner to others within their group. This means that when animals switch behaviours, e.g. from lying to grazing, a degree of synchrony is beneficial. Sometimes this synchrony can be provided by environmental cues, at other times it is provided by the group members themselves. In 1978, Clayton wrote "...where environmental stimuli only provide gross synchrony, socially facilitated behaviour will provide finer-scale synchrony, and, what is functionally important, greater cohesion of the social group’.