Knowing friend and foe: investigating the social behaviour of feral cattle (Bos taurus)

Abstract

Affiliative and agonistic interactions are fundamental properties of gregarious species, helping to establish social bonds between preferential partners and maintain stable, cohesive groups. The social environment of an animal is critical for its fitness, with both individual characteristics and social organisation affecting survival and reproduction. The majority of sociality research is conducted on primates, but ungulates are promising candidates for investigating how individual traits and socioecological characteristics affect behaviour. I examined the social behaviour of adult free-ranging feral cattle (Bos taurus) in Hong Kong SAR, China. I asked which factors affected social interaction decisions and investigated how individual traits (primarily sex and dominance) affected the distribution of affiliation and aggression. In Chapter 1, I reviewed current knowledge on the hygienic, psychological and social functions of allogrooming in ungulates. I highlight that allogrooming is likely to have been coopted for social purposes, but that the variety and extent of these have not yet been fully explored. In Chapter 2, I investigated the association between allogrooming, dominance status and sex in a single group of feral cattle. Both sex and dominance affected allogrooming distribution, with higher-ranking females receiving more allogrooming. Chapter 3 examined whether individual and group-level dynamics affected these relationships in five groups of feral cattle. I found that both sociodemographic (sex, dominance and group size) and anthropogenic factors (supplementary provisioning) affected affiliative and aggressive behaviours. In Chapter 4, I investigated whether differences in social relationship and spatial proximity affected behavioural synchrony. I found that both sex and proximity affected the likelihood of being synchronised in behaviour, and fission events were more frequent when group synchrony was lower. Chapter 5 assessed the effect of bystanders on ongoing affiliative interactions and found that allogrooming duration increased with the number of surrounding animals. Cattle selectively intervened in each other’s bonding attempts, with bystanders being more likely to intervene if they had a strong social bond with the performer but not the receiver. Finally, in Chapter 6, I explored the strategic direction of aggression and affiliation relative to dominance status and partner sex. I found that allogrooming differed in direction relative to rank between male-male and female-female dyads but found no difference in aggressive strategy according to the cost of the behaviour. In summary, I provided a unique insight into cattle sociality, highlighting the importance of interaction distribution in mixed-sex groups, as well as exploring how individual traits and sociodemographic factors asymmetrically affect social behaviour.

Date of Award	8 Aug 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Alan G. McElligott (Supervisor) & Kate Jade FLAY (Co-supervisor)