![]() Interestingly, adult females with calves were more likely to be found closer to traditional pastoralist compounds called bomas, made by livestock-keeping, non-farming people. “Therefore, we felt it was important to understand how human presence affected grouping behavior, as natural giraffe habitat is ever-more dominated by people.” “Outside the parks, the human population has been rapidly expanding in recent years,” said Derek Lee, associate research professor of biology at Penn State and co-author of the study. The study also explored the influence of humans on giraffe grouping behaviors. Some cattle ranchers promote shrub removal to encourage grass for their livestock, but this thinning of brush could be detrimental to giraffes and other animals that share the rangelands. ![]() Dense bushlands are therefore important habitat for giraffe calves that the researchers suggest should be protected. This observation supports the idea that giraffe mothers and calves have a strategy of hiding in dense bushes, rather than staying in open areas to better see lions or gathering in large groups to dilute the predation risk. The researchers showed that in areas with the most lions, groups with calves were found more often in dense bushes than in open grasslands, and that those groups were smaller in size. “We were testing hypotheses about mother and calf behavior to see if their strategy was for calves to hide in thick bushes to avoid predators, be in the open to see predators coming, or be in large groups for many eyes and lower individual risk.” “Giraffe calves are vulnerable to being killed by lions and other carnivores, while adults are typically large enough to escape predation,” said senior author Barbara König, professor at the University of Zürich. In contrast, predation risk was a very important factor influencing groups of giraffes with calves. These adult groups formed the largest groups-up to 66 individuals-in the rainy season when food is plentiful, but formed smaller groups during the dry season when food is harder to find. The study found that groups composed of only adult giraffes were food-focused and not affected by predation risk. So, we wondered how do these options influence giraffe grouping behavior?” ![]() There are lots of options in this landscape, including fewer lions outside the parks versus inside. “Giraffes in our huge, unfenced study area can choose from among many different places to spend their time-places with different kinds of trees and bushes, places deep inside protected parks, or places closer to farming towns or ranchlands where people live. “Like all herbivores, giraffes need to find quality food to survive, but also need to avoid lions, or at least see them coming,” said Monica Bond, PhD candidate from the University of Zürich and lead author of the paper. A paper describing the research, which can help land managers to protect the habitats most important for giraffes, appears online in the journal Oecologia. An international team of researchers from Penn State and the University of Zürich studied giraffe behavior in a 2,000 square kilometer region of Africa and pinpointed some of the special requirements needed by mother giraffes to keep their babies safe. The behavior of giraffe groups with calves is influenced more strongly by the risk of predators than is the behavior of all-adult groups, which is mostly determined by the availability of food.
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