To survive, animals must find nutritious food and drinking water—sometimes during long dry seasons or cold periods—and at the same time avoid being eaten. Plant-eating mammals with hooves are an extraordinarily diverse group of animals and are critically important in East African savannas. Yet they must compete more and more with humans for space in a fast-changing world while also evading hungry lions, leopards, and other natural predators. A new study by scientists from the University of Zurich and Pennsylvania State University, published in the Journal of Mammalogy, investigated the habitat needs of a community of hooved-mammal species in the Tarangire Ecosystem of northern Tanzania, and how vegetation, water, presence of humans and risks from predators influenced their use of these habitats.
Click here for original story, How people, food and water affect large herbivore distribution in East African savannas
Source: Phys.org