It turns out that the giraffe herd has a previously unknown 'complex female society'
Giraffes that roam the land of Africa have traditionally been considered by zoologists to be 'not social animals.' However, a study that analyzed vast amounts of data on giraffe herds newly revealed that the giraffes had a very complex relationship centered around helping each other.
A review of the social behavior of the giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis: a misunderstood but socially complex species --Muller ---- Mammal Review --Wiley Online Library
Giraffes are as socially compl | EurekAlert! Science News Releases
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/924159
Surprise! Turns Out Giraffes Have Highly Complex Social Lives Akin to Elephants
https://www.sciencealert.com/giraffes-have-been-deeply-misunderstood-they-re-actually-as-complexly-social-as-elephants
While giraffes are known to form herds, individuals appear to be changing peers one after another, so until now, 'other than the parent-child relationship between a young giraffe and its mother, it is social. There is no connection. ' For example, the 1991 literature , which discusses the behavior of mammals in Africa, describes giraffes as 'physically and socially distant from each other, without continuous involvement with peers, and in the most crude way. It is an animal that associates with an individual. '
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In the 2000s, with the spread of digital cameras and the advent of sophisticated individual identification technology, it was pointed out that 'the giraffe herd may have more patterns than random relationships'. .. However, it was unclear what kind of society was being formed, as there were few research data that tracked giraffe herds over the long term.
So, a team of biologists Zoe Muller and Stephen Harris from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom conducted a cross-sectional study of 404 treatises investigating herds of giraffes.
As a result, the group of individual giraffes is often a group of mature females, some of whom have been acting together for more than 6 years, and mothers and their children have been in a relationship for more than 15 years. It turned out that there was a case. These giraffe groups can consist of up to three generations of kinship, where an adult female takes care of the child of another mother giraffe or mourns the death of another individual's child together. It is said that the situation was observed.
In addition, Muller et al. Focused on the age of the giraffe and found that female giraffes remained involved in the herd for more than 10 years after being unable to reproduce. Since giraffes have a lifespan of about 30 years, female giraffes spend about 30% of their lives in the postmenopausal state. This was comparable to 23% of elephants and 35% of orca, where parented females play an important role in complex societies.
by Zoe Muller
In some mammals, including humans, females who have finished raising their children have been observed to help the next generation of their children, which is known as the 'grandmother hypothesis.' Müller et al. Suspect that giraffe females also cooperate in matrilineal society to raise children and help the prosperity of their offspring.
'It's worth noting that the giraffe, one of the most prominent and symbolic animals in Africa, remained poorly understood. In this study, the giraffe is complex and collaborative,' Müller said. I found that I live in a maternal society with a unique social system, and I hope this will give me a better understanding of the giraffe's ecology and the need for protection. '
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