A new social network analysis of female wild red deer on the Isle of Rum in Scotland shows that ageing deer tend to adopt a life of solitude in their advancing years A multidisciplinary team led by researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh has found that wild red deer become less sociable with age. Lead author Dr Greg Albery, Department of Biology, University of Oxford said: ‘We found that deer’s social networks shrink as they grow old and begin associating less with others. This ‘social ageing’ appears to be driven by older individuals choosing to live in more isolated locations and engaging with fewer other deer within these sparser areas.’ Building a general understanding of how individuals change their social behaviour as they age is useful for research across...
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