Do Père David's Deer Lose Memories of Their Ancestral Predators?

Chunwang Li; Xiaobo Yang; Yuhua Ding; Linyuan Zhang; Hongxia Fang; Songhua Tang; Zhigang Jiang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023623

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Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Do Père David's Deer Lose Memories of Their Ancestral Predators?

Chunwang Li ,

Contributed equally to this work with: Chunwang Li, Xiaobo Yang

Affiliation Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
⨯
Xiaobo Yang ,

Contributed equally to this work with: Chunwang Li, Xiaobo Yang

Affiliations Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
⨯
Yuhua Ding,

Affiliation Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve, Dafeng Jiangsu, China
⨯
Linyuan Zhang,

Affiliation Beijing Milu Ecological Research Center, Beijing, China
⨯
Hongxia Fang,

Affiliation Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
⨯
Songhua Tang,

Affiliation Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
⨯
Zhigang Jiang

* E-mail: jiangzg@ioz.ac.cn

Affiliations Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
⨯

Do Père David's Deer Lose Memories of Their Ancestral Predators?

Chunwang Li,
Xiaobo Yang,
Yuhua Ding,
Linyuan Zhang,
Hongxia Fang,
Songhua Tang,
Zhigang Jiang

Published: August 24, 2011
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0023623

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1200 years of captivity hasn't dulled the memory of tigers for Pere David's Deer

Posted by Matt_Hayward on 31 Aug 2011 at 01:25 GMT

Luke Hunter and Joel Berger have shown how rapidly native herbivores 'remember' appropriate anti-predator behaviours when carnivores are reintroduced into their environments. This study on Pere David's deer suggests that prey species may take an extensive period of time to 'forget' about the risks predators pose. Pere David's deer sit right in the centre of the preferred prey weight range of tigers and they must have been a major prey source, so it is not surprising that they retain some anti-predator response to tigers despite their 1200 years of isolation from tigers. This is a very interesting result.

No competing interests declared.

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Do Père David's Deer Lose Memories of Their Ancestral Predators?

Do Père David's Deer Lose Memories of Their Ancestral Predators?

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1200 years of captivity hasn't dulled the memory of tigers for Pere David's Deer

Posted by Matt_Hayward on 31 Aug 2011 at 01:25 GMT