School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
Tibet Plateau Institute of Biology, Lhasa, China.
PLoS One. 2018 Dec 27;13(12):e0204379. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204379. eCollection 2018.
Rest contributes a large part of animals' daily life, and animals usually rest in two ways, standing or in recumbence. Small or medium sized ungulates bed to rest in most cases, and standing rest is very rare and hardly seen. Here we described a standing rest behavior of Tibetan antelopes (Pantholops hodgsonii) living on the Tibet Plateau which has not been reported before. We named the standing rest behavior Puppet behavior, since the antelope stand still for a certain time. Of the 304 individuals observed, 48.3% (98/203) of adult and sub-adult males expressed the Puppet behavior, whereas only 6.3% (6/96) of females did, indicating an obvious sexual difference. Puppet behavior occurred more frequently at noon and in the afternoon on sunny and cloudy days, meaning that daytime and weather were both influential factors. Puppet behavior was usually accompanied with rumination and sometimes ended with leg-shaking. Our results suggest that Puppet behavior may be an adaptive form of rest, which may serve a thermoregulatory and anti-predation function, and may be simpler and safer than recumbent rest.
休息占据了动物日常生活的很大一部分，动物通常以两种方式休息，即站立或躺着。大多数中小体型的有蹄类动物会躺着休息，而站立休息则非常罕见且难以见到。在这里，我们描述了一种以前未被报道过的青藏高原地区藏羚羊（Pantholops hodgsonii）的站立休息行为。我们将这种站立休息行为命名为“木偶行为”，因为藏羚羊会在一定时间内保持静止。在观察到的 304 只个体中，48.3%（98/203）的成年和亚成体雄性表现出“木偶行为”，而只有 6.3%（6/96）的雌性表现出这种行为，表明存在明显的性别差异。“木偶行为”在晴天和阴天的中午和下午更频繁发生，这意味着白天和天气都是影响因素。“木偶行为”通常伴随着反刍，有时会以腿部抖动结束。我们的研究结果表明，“木偶行为”可能是一种适应性的休息形式，它可能具有体温调节和抗捕食的功能，并且可能比躺着休息更简单、更安全。
