In the opening scene of The Lion King, animals of every stripe, spot and tusk march in unison across the African plains, bound by an unseen thread of connection.
This iconic moment mirrors a natural phenomenon in the wild: zebras forging unlikely alliances with giraffes and traveling as a unified herd.
This real-life stripes-meets-spots pairing appears to serve a vital strategic purpose. Zebras and giraffes form a symbiotic bond that boosts both species’ chances of survival in a landscape teeming with lions and other threats, researchers report in a study in press for the April issue of American Naturalist. By attaching video cameras to zebras, the team documented for