Tibetan antelope rests like a Puppet

Abstract

Rest contributes to a large part of animals' daily life, and animals usually 11 rest in two ways, standing or in recumbence. For small or medium sized ungulates, 12 they bed to rest in most cases, and standing rest is very rare and hardly seen. Here we 13 described a standing rest behaviour of medium sized Tibetan antelopes (Pantholops 14 hodgsonii) living on the roof of the world, Tibet Plateau, which has not been reported 15 before. We named the standing rest behaviour here as Puppet behaviour, since the 16 antelope can stand still for a certain time just like a Puppet. Of the total 304 focal 17 individuals, 48.3% (98/203) of adult and sub-adult males expressed the Puppet 18 behaviour, whereas only 6.3% (6/96) of females did, indicating an obvious sexual 19 difference. Puppet behaviour occurred more frequently at noon and in the afternoon 20 on sunny and cloudy days, meaning that day time and weather were both influential 21 factors. Puppet behaviour was usually accompanied with rumination and sometimes 22 ended with leg-shaking. Our results suggest that Puppet behaviour is probably an 23 adaptive form of rest, which serves a thermoregulatory and anti-predation function, 24 and is much simpler and safer than recumbent rest. 25 26 27 28Animals usually behave in a relatively fixed manner, and these common 29 behaviours can be classified into several categories, including feeding, resting, 30 moving, alerting, grooming, etc. Animals need rest or sleep to perform a number of 31 physiological functions such as saving energy, thermoregulation, and maintenance of 32 their immune system [1, 2]. Generally, animals need to sleep or take rest for 2 to more 33 than 20 hours a day to recover from the exhaustion due to daily activities [3][4][5][6] . Even 34 during the daytime, animals spend a large amount of their time to rest [3]. 35