ABSTRACT.The grooming behaviour ofAlaptus fusculusis described. Data on the frequencies of occurrence of seventeen different actions and their sequences were analysed. A single link cluster‐analysis of preceding‐following actions showed that in any bout of grooming the probabilities of actions by one leg being followed by actions initiated by the same leg (or its contralateral) are high. On the assumption that the behavioural sequences were Markovian, a vector of the species' ‘average behaviour’, in terms of relative frequencies of occurrence, was computed from transition probabilities. Further analysis, however, using indices derived from information theory shows that the behaviour has higher order dependencies; that is that an event is influenced by events further back in the sequence than the one immediately prece