Social Structures
Today, the equines are the only social perissodactyls still extant. Horses organize themselves into small bands with a dominant mare at the top of the pecking order, as well as a resident stallion. Several bands will share a common territory, with some members of one band joining another band, every so often. These bands, in turn, form a herd.
Huge fossil beds made of the bones of hundreds or thousands of individuals suggest that many of the larger brontothere species were social animals at least some of the time. Some prehistoric rhinoceroses, such as Diceratherium, were also social animals that organized themselves into herds. However, modern-day rhinoceroses are solitary animals that maintain territories, often attacking members of their own species when their space has been invaded. Tapirs, too, are solitary animals, though they are shy, retiring creatures which do not defend or maintain territories.
Read more about this topic: Odd-toed Ungulate
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or structures:
“We were that generation called “silent,” but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period’s official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate.”
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