Old deer prefer their own company as they age, a new study has found.

Analysis of female wild red deer on the Isle of Rum shows that ageing ones tend to adopt a life of solitude in their advancing years.

The study was led by researchers from the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh.

Lead author Dr Greg Albery, of Oxford’s department of biology, said: ‘We found that deer’s social networks shrink as they grow old and begin associating less with others.

‘This “social ageing” appears to be driven by older individuals choosing to live in more isolated locations and engaging with fewer other deer within these sparser areas.’ The team applied new social network analysis methods to a 46-year dataset made up of more than 200,000 census observations of over 3,500 female deer throughout their lifetimes.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Study senior author Dr Josh Firth, also of Oxford University, said: ‘This new evidence of social ageing in the wild shows the value of long-term datasets.

‘By tracking many individuals simultaneously over their entire lives, we can understand how and why their social associations with one another change over time.’

The researchers said further work was now needed to understand exactly why ageing deer become less social.

Source: Read Full Article