Directed movement and orientation across a large natural landscape by zebras, Equus burchelli antiquorum
Section snippets
Movement Data
We fitted nine adult zebra mares with either Televilt Posrec (N = 5) or Televilt Simplex (N = 4) GPS collars (Televilt/TVP Positioning AB, Lindesberg, Sweden; Brooks et al. 2008). Mares were collared in preference to stallions to reduce the risk of collar damage during intrasex fighting and selected at random from across the population to ensure they were from different harems. They were darted from a helicopter by an experienced wildlife veterinarian, using the tranquilliser etorphine
Directed Movement
Individual zebras had different spatial foraging strategies. Seven followed directed paths, with a positive CRWdiff (scaling test for oriented movement: P < 0.014) along the lower to medium spatial scale ranges (Table 1), signifying directed movement at these spatial scales. The remaining two zebras (552 and 530) foraged out from the centralized waterholes along a path not significantly different to a CRW, across all but the largest spatial scales. In both groups of zebras, those that followed
Discussion
We identified individually distinct, scalar-sensitive movement patterns by zebras. Seven of the nine zebras we observed over the course of a dry season followed a directed movement path while walking out from the centrally located waterholes towards their selected foraging patch. The use of directed movement implies that zebras had a well-defined spatial awareness of patch location, preferentially selecting a patch and orienting their movement by walking directly towards it (Howery et al. 1999
Acknowledgments
We thank the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, Botswana for research permits and technical support, the Dulverton Trust, the Rufford Foundation, the Walt Disney Company Foundation, Columbus Zoo, San Antonio Zoo, the Gilchrist Educational Trust and Ken Moore for funding, L. Patterson for undertaking the veterinary procedures required for this study and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
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S. Harris is at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UG, U.K.