A CAUSAL-ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BEHAVIOR PATTERNS OF FREE-LIVING WARTHOGS

Studied were, using factor and concordance analysis, the causal relati onships between behaviour patterns of free living warthogs Phacochoeru s aethiopicus in the Andries Vosloo Kudu Reserve, Eastern Cape Provinc e, South Africa. Warthog behaviour patterns fall into five categories with similar causal relationships, the first two broad categories cons isting of social behaviours, a third large category comprising comfort behaviour patterns, the other two consisting of agonistic and feeding behaviour. Comparison of the number of factors necessary to explain o ver 80% of the behavioural variance in warthogs with those for other s pecies indicates that warthogs have a behavioural repertoire based on less complex causal relationships than primates, social carnivores and dolphins but more complex than that of bovines.