Social Structures
Today, the equines are the only social perissodactyls still extant. Horses organize themselves into small bands with a dominant mare at the top of the pecking order, as well as a resident stallion. Several bands will share a common territory, with some members of one band joining another band, every so often. These bands, in turn, form a herd.
Huge fossil beds made of the bones of hundreds or thousands of individuals suggest that many of the larger brontothere species were social animals at least some of the time. Some prehistoric rhinoceroses, such as Diceratherium, were also social animals that organized themselves into herds. However, modern-day rhinoceroses are solitary animals that maintain territories, often attacking members of their own species when their space has been invaded. Tapirs, too, are solitary animals, though they are shy, retiring creatures which do not defend or maintain territories.
Read more about this topic: Odd-toed Ungulate
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or structures:
“A man’s social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he would lie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)