Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A zebra harem within a herd. The plains zebra is highly social and usually forms small family groups called harems, which consist of a single stallion, several mares and their recent offspring. The adult membership of a harem is highly stable, typically remaining together for months to years.
A plains zebra group . Zebra species have two basic social structures. Plains and mountain zebras live in stable, closed family groups or harems consisting of one stallion, several mares, and their offspring. These groups have their own home ranges, which overlap, and they tend to be nomadic. Stallions form and expand their harems by herding ...
Sociobiology investigates social behaviors such as mating patterns, territorial fights, pack hunting, and the hive society of social insects. It argues that just as selection pressure led to animals evolving useful ways of interacting with the natural environment, so also it led to the genetic evolution of advantageous social behavior. [4]
Plains zebra groups gather into large herds and may create temporarily stable subgroups within a herd, allowing individuals to interact with those outside their group. Among harem-holding species, this behavior has only otherwise been observed in primates such as the gelada and the hamadryas baboon. Females of harem species benefit as males ...
Social learners' fitness decreases as their frequency increases. Social learning does not necessarily mean that the transmitted behavior is the most efficient response to a stimulus. If a socially learned behavior expends unnecessary energy, and there is a more efficient strategy that is not being utilized, employing social learning is maladaptive.
Chapman's zebra are native to savannas and similar habitats of north-east South Africa, north to Zimbabwe, west into Botswana, the Caprivi Strip in Namibia, and southern Angola. [4] Like the other subspecies of plains zebra, it is a herbivore that exists largely on a diet of grasses, and undertakes a migration during the wet season to find ...
Burchell's zebra (Equus quagga burchellii) is a southern subspecies of the plains zebra. It is named after the British explorer and naturalist William John Burchell. Common names include bontequagga, Damaraland zebra, and Zululand zebra (Gray, 1824). [1] Burchell's zebra is the only subspecies of zebra which may be legally farmed for human ...
Social selection is a term used with varying meanings in biology. Joan Roughgarden proposed a hypothesis called social selection as an alternative to sexual selection. Social selection is argued to be a mode of natural selection based on reproductive transactions and a two-tiered approach to evolution and the development of social behavior. [1]