Flocking for food or flockmates?
Animals in groups behave cohesively, even when those animals are domesticated and are housed in limited environments. But how is such group cohesion maintained? Do animals move in an independent manner, according to their own motivations, or in a social manner, with respect to the movements of others? Here, we use a mathematical model to […]
The birth of an infant decreases group spacing in a zoo-housed lowland gorilla group (Gorilla gorilla gorilla)
Changes in group composition can alter the behavior of social animals such as gorillas. Although gorilla births are presumed to affect group spacing patterns, there is relatively little data about how these events affect gorilla group cohesion. We investigated how members of a western lowland gorilla group (n = 6) at Lincoln Park Zoo (Chicago, IL, USA) […]