Mother‐young relationships in captive ungulates: Spatial and temporal patterns

Ungulates are often divided into two groups—the followers and the hiders—characterized by differing spatial and temporal patterns of mother‐young behavior. We assessed the relative roles of mother and young in maintaining these patterns by recording standardized quantitative measures on 37 mother‐young pairs representing eight species. We found no differences between followers and hiders on any of our measures. The mother was largely responsible for maintaining the species characteristic spacing distances between mother and young, although young sometimes contributed. The mother usually initiated activity bouts of the young. Activity bouts of young were longer and more frequent when the mother was active than when she was lying down. Young often stood when their mother was lying, but these activity bouts were brief. Young usually terminated their own activity bouts. Hinde's measure, a measure designed to quantify the relative roles of primate mother and young in maintaining proximity, proved less satisfactory for ungulates, due to the multiple interpretations possible for low values of the measure and the difficulty of adequately defining approaches and departures.