Novel observation of play behaviour between a harem holder and a bachelor group of Przewalski's horses in the wild

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60460709%3A41340%2F23%3A97343" target="_blank" >RIV/60460709:41340/23:97343 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-023-00421-9" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-023-00421-9</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10211-023-00421-9" target="_blank" >10.1007/s10211-023-00421-9</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Novel observation of play behaviour between a harem holder and a bachelor group of Przewalski's horses in the wild

Original language description

Przewalski's horses live in stable nonterritorial families (harem) of one or more harem stallions, several mares, and their offspring. The harem stallion typically behaves aggressively towards any male intruder approaching the harem. Play behaviour is frequently observed among the group members in horses. For stallions, the most common, well-known cases of play behaviour are found between members of bachelor groups (groups of young stallions) and between the harem stallion and his offspring. The play between the harem stallion and members of the bachelor groups is, on the other hand, seemingly much rarer as a description of such events in the literature is anecdotal. In this note, we present our observation conducted in the Great Gobi B Strictly Protected Area (Mongolia) and describe the play behaviour between a Przewalski's horse harem stallion and members of a bachelor group. The observation was done as a part of broader research during which selected Przewalski's horses' groups were located by binoculars in daily monitoring routines and filmed from a close distance (from 150 to 800 m). Behavioural Observation Research Interactive Software (BORIS) was used to extract data from the video recordings. The observation described in this note lasted for similar to 180 min, during which the horses engaged in three separate bouts of play and repeated inter-group association. During the whole study (241.5 h of video recordings), this was the only observation including inter-group interactions. We observed two other events during which two harems approached each other (but never merged). Our observation is the first video recording of such an event and raises the question of how prevalent this behaviour is in the Przewalski's horses' restored natural populations. We conclude that this behaviour is unusual or has not been sufficiently studied in wild or feral harems. Further technological advances may help reveal more information on this topic.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10614 - Behavioral sciences biology

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

ACTA ETHOLOGICA

ISSN

0873-9749

e-ISSN

0873-9749

Volume of the periodical

26

Issue of the periodical within the volume

JUN 2023

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

6

Pages from-to

145-150

UT code for WoS article

000985368000001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85159076992