Open AccessThere and back again - a zebra's tale
Author(s) -
Hattie L. A. BartlamBrooks,
Simon Wilshin,
Tatjana Y. Hubel,
Stephen Hailes,
Emily Bennitt,
Alan M. Wilson
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of experimental biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.367
H-Index - 185
eISSN - 1477-9145
pISSN - 0022-0949
DOI - 10.1242/jeb.232140
Subject(s) - equus , zebra (computer) , range (aeronautics) , interval (graph theory) , home range , scale (ratio) , computer science , geography , ecology , statistics , cartography , mathematics , biology , habitat , engineering , combinatorics , operating system , aerospace engineering
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 study repeated journeys made by wild 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 use 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 uniform angular distribution of trajectories. The typical separation of the routes was found to be small (1.96 m), while the scale at which neighboring 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.