Study | Familiar Faces Matter for Black Rhinos
The image, captured by Jenny Hishin, features a group of critically endangered black rhino (Diceros bicornis), the subject of a new Oikos paper on association behaviour in this usually solitary species.
Such groupings can be risky. Black rhinos are highly aggressive towards each other, and injuries from fighting are among the most common causes of mortality.
Using nearly 70 000 sightings from 14 reserves in southern Africa, we examined how familiarity influences associations and how these associations relate to mortality risk.
We found that:
Black rhinos preferentially associated with familiar individuals, which may reduce the risk of aggression.
For calves, associations can be costly: mortality risk increased when they frequently associated with individuals other than their mother. Effects in adults were nuanced.
In adults, associating with more males or more adults was linked to higher mortality risk.
Among adults observed associating with at least one unrelated individual, males had lower mortality risk than females.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to document long-term association patterns in a solitary ungulate. It adds to growing evidence that social interactions in solitary species are more complex than previously assumed.
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