PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Bartlam-Brooks, Hattie
AU  - Wilshin, Simon
AU  - Hubel, Tatjana
AU  - Hailes, Stephen
AU  - Bennitt, Emily
AU  - Wilson, Alan M.
TI  - There and back again – a zebra's tale
AID  - 10.1242/jeb.232140
DP  - 2020 Dec 01
TA  - The Journal of Experimental Biology
PG  - jeb232140
VI  - 223
IP  - 23
4099  - http://jeb.biologists.org/content/223/23/jeb232140.short
4100  - http://jeb.biologists.org/content/223/23/jeb232140.full
SO  - J. Exp. Biol.2020 Dec 01; 223
AB  - Animals need to navigate between resources such as water, food and shelter, and how they achieve this is likely to vary with species. Here, using high-accuracy GPS data, we studied repeated journeys made by wild plains zebra (Equus quagga) through a naturally vegetated environment to explore whether they consistently follow the same route through the area or whether they use a range of routes to reach their goal. We used a model to distinguish and quantify these two possibilities and show that our observations are consistent with the use of multiple routes. Our model performs better than assuming a uniform angular distribution of trajectories. The typical separation of the routes was found to be small (1.96 m), while the scale at which neighbouring trajectories are informative to direction of travel was found to be large (with a confidence interval of 1.19–26.4 m). Our observations are consistent with the hypothesis that zebra are able to navigate without having to return to previously used routes, instead using numerous different routes of similar trajectories.