__________________________________________________ _____________________________________
COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan : Herd responsibility : The Sunday Statesman : 05 July 2015
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________

HERD RESPONSIBILITY

( Gaur, Elephant, Blackbuck )

"MANY experienced observers have said that in a herd of Blackbuck leadership is usually vested in an old doe. Among other animals that go about in parties and herds, consisting of one dominant male and his "harem", the same matriarchal tendency has been reported - for example, among Elephants and Gaur. No doubt this is substantially true, but observation of the behaviour of herd-bulls (in Elephant and Gaur herds) suggested to me that the position is by no means as simple as stated.

It has been said that a tusker or master bull of a gaur herd is always in the rearguard, and seeks independent escape when the alarm is sounded, looking always to the safety of his hide and never caring to look after the rest of the herd. That, like many sweeping statements on animal behaviour, is not true. While it is generally valid, there are occasions when the herd-bull does take upon himself the responsibility of covering the retreat of the herd - it is likely that such instances are due both to some individual peculiarity of the herd-bull and to circumstances.

Anyway, I have seen a Gaur bull advance towards a party of men and stand his ground truculently till the rest of the herd had made good its hurried escape, and another time I saw two herd-bulls patrol the periphery of a hunched group of Gaur when a Tiger was around.

And following a herd of Elephants, I had a rather frightening experience. The tusker, a singularly powerful one, not only guarded the retreat of the herd but actually urged the cows on, by voice and physical hustling; when they were all gone, he belligerently uprooted a young tree and kicked it about in front of us (Gaur bulls, too, indulge in similar demonstrations at times), then slowly followed the herd, turning back repeatedly to halt us.

I should like further opportunity for the study of such behaviour before writing about this aspect of herd-mastery in elephants and gaur. However, I have been experimenting, for the past few months, with Blackbuck, and can say while alarm is usually sounded by the doe, the herd-buck assumes command of the retreat as often as not.

As others have pointed out, it is not any one doe that is always on guard duty when a herd of Blackbuck is grazing. The master-buck may be with the does, or else on the outskirts of the group by himself (or with one select doe). An adult doe is on the watch while the rest of the herd grazes; she grazes when another doe takes up the watch; at times the buck, too, takes his turn at watching. I am sorry to be so full of guarded qualifications, but it is just not possible to be more definite.

My method was to creep up gradually, behind cover, towards a grazing herd, and to hide behind a bush. Then I would excite an alarm, varying the mode of excitement each time - by shaking the bush, on waving a white handkerchief, or whistling. Sometimes the buck would be the first to spot me, but more often the watching doe. Then the does and young would bolt; after the usual preliminary "high jinks" they would bolt in a herd, though one or two of the does might not take the same line as the rest but scatter sideways. At times, especially when he was in the middle of the herd, the buck would bolt with the main body of the herd, but more often he would stay behind to round up the does that were taking an independent line, and chase them in front of him towards the rest of the herd.

Both the buck and does sound the alarm with the same grunting snort, except that it is more a grunt than snort when the buck sounds it, and a sort of snort when a doe sounds it. But the buck directing a scattering doe to follow the main body of the departed herd prances around her with the same strutting gait that he uses during the courtship display, tail curled over the rump, nose high, limbs moving in a high, stilted action - the only difference I noticed between the courtship display and this hustling was that when hustling a doe he does not droop the ears. This rounding up of recalcitrant does was done when the source of alarm (myself) was at some distance; when the alarm was urgent, he drove the does ahead at a gallop, with lowered head and horns, even prodding them at times.

I conducted these experiments at Guindy Park, where the territory of each herd is highly limited. I do not know to what extent the buck's behaviour will differ or if it will differ at all, when the terrain is unlimited, as it is under more natural conditions."

-M. Krishnan

This was first published on 28 February 1960 in The Sunday Statesman

# A beautiful sketch of a Blackbuck (male) captioned 'BUCK STRUTTING TO DRIVE DOES' showing nose held high, tail curled over the rump drawn by the author himself has not been reproduced here.