The Ecology and Behaviour of Giraffe in Northern Botswana
Northern Botswana is one of the giraffe strongholds across its geographic range in the absence of, or with low impact from, the major anthropological threats faced elsewhere. Yet despite its conservation significance, until now, no giraffe specific ecological or behavioural studies have been undertaken. Moreover, Africa’s giraffe population has been significantly reduced over the last […]
Factors Affecting Group Size and Vigilance Behaviour of Maasai Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi) on the Serengeti-Ngorongoro Ecosystem, Tanzania
This study investigated the factors affecting different group sizes of Maasai giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi) in the Serengeti-Ngorongoro ecosystem. The study was motivated to test the following hypotheses: 1) in a given group, the sex ratio of males to females with calves is related to group size; 2) group size affects vigilance behaviour; 3) illegal […]
Social Behavior and communication in a herd of captive giraffe
Data on wild giraffe herds have often been interpreted as a random association of individuals, but the extent to which giraffe have a more complex social structure may have been overlooked. The focus of this dissertation is to investigate patterns of social relationships among individual giraffe. Social interaction and association (proximity and nearest neighbor) distributions […]
Social influences on vigilance behaviour in giraffes, Giraffa camelopardalis
Vigilance in ungulates is considered to have a predominantly antipredator function, with the frequency and duration of scans per individual decreasing with increasing group size. Social influences on vigilance scans have been overlooked in studies on ungulates, although studies in primates and birds show that conspecific scans are important determinants of vigilance behaviour. We investigated […]
Giraffe Cow-Calf Relationships and Social Development of the Calf in the Serengeti
Activity patterns of giraffe calves and calf-mother distances have been studied as functions of age and sex of the calf in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Particular attention was paid to the nature of the cow-calf bond, suckling behavior, the social development of the calf, relationships between calves and between mother-calf pairs in calf groups, […]
Giraffe mothers in East Africa linger for days near the remains of their dead calves
Repeated investigation of dead young or carrying of corpses has been observed in several mammalian taxa, notably primates [e.g. yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus): Altmann, 1980; chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Goodall, 1986; Matsuzawa, 1997; Biro et al., 2010; ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta): Nakamichi, Koyama & Jolly, 1996; Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus bieti): Li et al., 2012), dolphins […]
Herd composition, kinship and fission–fusion social dynamics among wild giraffe
A variety of social systems have evolved as a consequence of competition and cooperation among individuals. Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis sp.) societies are an anomaly because the dearth of long-term data has produced two polar perspectives: a loose amalgamation of non-bonded individuals that sometimes coalesce into a herd and a structured social system with a fission–fusion […]