A recent social network analysis of female wild red deer on Scotland's Isle of Rum reveals that older deer tend to live solitary lives as they age.
According to the Mammal Society, red deer, the largest species of deer in Scotland, typically live in groups of up to 40 individuals year-round in open-hill habitats. Particularly, females live apart from males and tend to dominate grassy habitats.
The social life of deers
Zahrin Lukman/Unsplash
Researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, who are part of a multidisciplinary team, have discovered that wild red deer lose their social skills as they age, as per Discover Magazine.
We discovered that deer's social networks contract as they get older and start hanging out with fewer people, according to the study's lead author Dr. Greg Albery of the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford.
Older people continuing to live in more remote areas and interacting with fewer other deer in these sparser areas appear to be the main causes of this social aging.
It is helpful for studies throughout many different species, including humans, to develop a general understanding of how people change their social behavior as they age.
Such research adds to our understanding of the effects of senescence on aging people while also possibly offering new perspectives on how societal structure and function may change as the population ages.
The team used cutting-edge social network analysis techniques on a sizable dataset spanning 46 years and including more than 200,000 census observational data of more than 3500 female deer throughout their lifetimes.
Female deer interact with fewer other animals in their home ranges as they get older. Additionally, they relocate to less populated regions of their habitat, as per ScienceDaily.
Older females were commonly found with smaller home ranges, farther from the center of the population, in regions of lower density, and with lower-quality grazing, in addition to becoming less central in the social network.
The importance of long-term datasets is demonstrated by this fresh evidence of social aging in the wild. According to Josh Firth, a senior author of the study and a professor of biology at Oxford University, by tracking many people concurrently throughout their entire lives, they can recognize how and why their social associations with others change over time.
Although previous research has suggested that older wild animals in other species may be less socially active than younger animals, it has previously been challenging to determine whether this was because of demographic changes or because more sociable individuals died earlier.
Dr. Albery continued that they were able to untangle the possible causes of these age-related declines in social behavior and to demonstrate how people's behavior changes throughout their lives by combining social networks with spatial location data.
Although previous research has suggested that older wild animals in other species will be less socially active than younger animals, it has previously been challenging to determine whether this was because of demographic changes or because more sociable individuals died earlier.
Using this extensive dataset, however, the new research demonstrates that social aging occurs at the individual level, where people consciously become less sociable throughout their lives.
