Relationships Between Morphology, Ecology, and Social Organization of African Ungulates

Abstract

The past two decades have brought a great increase in our knowledge on the ethology of African ungulates. Much of the information accumulated has, of necessity, been largely descriptive, with occasional speculations on functional aspects and relatively rare attempts at substantiating such speculations by accurate observational data. An important next step in expanding our understanding of ungulate biology, and particularly the interrelationships between behavioral and ecological adaptations, was to collate the available information in an evolutionary framework and to formulate hypotheses that could be tested by further observation and, if possible, experimentation.