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NEW YORK (AP) – Looking for the best place to eat? Ask a local. Scientists now claim that the same insights shape the spring migrations of moose and mouflon.
New research indicates that animals teach experienced members of the herd to find the best food, build a kind of cultural know-how that has survived the generations and has improved over the decades.
Although scientists have speculated before this happens in hoofed animals, this is the first conclusive test of this idea, said Matthew Kauffman, a researcher at the American University of Geology.
The researchers followed the movements of 267 American sheep and 189 moose in Wyoming, Idaho and South Dakota, who wore GPS devices on collars. They used satellite data to know where and when vegetation on the migration routes reached the stage of growth that animals preferred to eat.
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Some collared animals came from herds established in an area for at least 200 years, while others came from herds introduced in recent decades. Scientists felt that if animals learned and developed over time how to find the best food, those from long-established herds would be more effective at locating the main forage than those from herds with shorter histories. .
And that's what they found by comparing GPS data on animals with the best forages. The longer the flock, the more animals they saw finding the best forage and the more likely they were to migrate.
The researchers did not study how knowledge is transmitted within flocks, but from young animals observing their mothers or other members of the herd, said lead author Brett Jesmer of the study. University of Wyoming.
The long and slow improvement of forage research over the decades indicates that herds rely on cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. A slow curve also showed the probability that animals migrate in the spring.
The results indicate that in herds that had entered their home range even between 30 and 50 years ago, only about a quarter of the animals on average migrated. But almost all animals migrated from flocks that had occupied their homes for about 200 years.
Such social learning of migration routes also seems to occur with cranes and geese, but not other birds, said Cornell University ornithologist Kevin McGowan, who was not involved in the study.
The researchers said the study had implications for conservation. When a migration corridor is blocked, for example by building a highway, it can go on for decades before big game herds establish a new route. It is therefore important to identify these corridors and to protect them.
Marco Festa-Bianchet, from the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada, who did not participate in the study, wrote in a scientific commentary that when animals with migrating hooves are moved as a conservation measure,
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Follow Malcolm Ritter at @MalcolmRitter. His recent work can be found here.
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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