RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 There and back again – a zebra's tale
JF The Journal of Experimental Biology
JO J. Exp. Biol.
FD The Company of Biologists Ltd
SP jeb232140
DO 10.1242/jeb.232140
VO 223
IS 23
A1 Bartlam-Brooks, Hattie
A1 Wilshin, Simon
A1 Hubel, Tatjana
A1 Hailes, Stephen
A1 Bennitt, Emily
A1 Wilson, Alan M.
YR 2020
UL http://jeb.biologists.org/content/223/23/jeb232140.abstract
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.