Leaving by staying: Dispersal decisions of young giraffes

Dispersal, the process where animals reaching sexual maturity move away from family, is important for maintaining genetic diversity and is key to the long-term persistence of natural populations. For most animals, this involves having to make risky journeys into the unknown in the hope of finding new communities in which to settle and reproduce. However, many animal societies—including those of humans—have structured social communities that overlap in space with one another. These potentially provide opportunities for maturing individuals to disperse socially without having to make large physical displacements. New research published today in the Journal of Animal Ecology shows that this strategy is employed by young dispersing giraffes.