Wildebeest - Ecology and Life History

Ecology and Life History

In a typical year, wildebeest calves are born within a short period of time (roughly 85% are born in a three-week period), presumably as an adaptation to swamp potential predators, such as hyenas and lions. Calves born outside the peak calving period often have lower survival rates. Immediately after they are born, wildebeest calves start following their mothers. However, these young calves suffer from high mortality and only those with the best genetic endowments and which have experienced mothers survive through the first few years of life.

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