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There and back again - a zebra's tale

Bartlam-Brooks, H; Wilshin, S; Hubel, T; Hailes, S; Bennitt, E; Wilson, A M

Authors

H Bartlam-Brooks

S Wilshin

T Hubel

S Hailes

E Bennitt

A M Wilson



Abstract

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.

Citation

Bartlam-Brooks, H., Wilshin, S., Hubel, T., Hailes, S., Bennitt, E., & Wilson, A. M. (2020). There and back again - a zebra's tale. Journal of Experimental Biology, jeb.232140. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.232140

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Oct 19, 2020
Publication Date Oct 27, 2020
Deposit Date Nov 5, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal The Journal of Experimental Biology
Print ISSN 0022-0949
Publisher The Company of Biologists
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Pages jeb.232140
DOI https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.232140
Keywords Insect Science, Animal Science and Zoology, Aquatic Science, Physiology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Molecular Biology
Public URL https://rvc-repository.worktribe.com/output/1375001

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