Mother-young recognition in goitered gazelle during hiding period

The mother-young recognition process is crucial for the growth and survival of progeny. In "follower" ungulate species, vocal and visual cues have been found to play a leading role in the mother-young identification process from the first days postpartum, with olfactory cues also important in establishing the initial selective mother-young bond immediately after birth. In "hider" species, however, much less has been documented of mother-young recognition behaviors, especially in their natural habitat. In this paper, we investigated this process in goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa), a typical hider species, in its native environment in Kazakhstan. Over the course of our study period, we investigated the behaviors of 257 females with twins and 158 females with singles through visual observations. We found that within the first month after birth, when females spend only a short time with their young, mothers recognized their fawns using mostly olfactory cues, while vision was used to locate their hiding offspring. Fawns vocalized very rarely, producing only distress calls that did not seem intended for individual identification. Licking of young by their mothers was observed frequently, not only during the first week after birth, when this action was very important for fawn stimulation for a number of physiological functions, but for several weeks after (until one month of age), when licking lost its physiological importance and likely became more of a recognition procedure. Fawns did not recognize their mothers at all, either through vision or vocalizations, since during their first weeks after birth, they responded to any gazelle that approached their hiding area. By a month after birth, when mothers and fawns began to stay together for longer periods of time, their recognition process became more enhanced, and in addition to olfactory cues, the mother and her young began to use more and more visual cues for longer distance identification, as well as vocalizations for shorter distances. Similar dynamics are likely typical for most hiding species, although information for wild ungulates is still very limited, especially for those with strong hider behaviors.