Agonistic interactions are ubiquitous behaviors among ungulates, as well as the whole animal kingdom.Aggression occurs in all sex, age, and social classes and serves a great variety of social functions, the mostimportant from which is the territory protection from intruders, as a form of contest for resources. Different speciesshow markedly different forms of such contests, ranging from noncontact displays to injurious or even deadly fights. Territorial males of many gazelle species prefer aggressive noncontact displays, fighting with each otherrarely. Furthermore, it is generally agreed that males have more often and longer aggressive interactions with rivalof the same age and social status and considerably less with younger males or bucks of other social status. In thispaper, we want to check if these two statements would be right for the aggressive behavior of goitered gazelle males, the agonistic behavior of which was not the subject of special consideration before. We found that the territorial male goitered gazelles demonstrated their agonistic behaviors most intensively during the rut inNovember-December and indeed they usually avoided straight fights with their neighbors and instead used mainly noncontact aggressive displays. Their rarely observed fights were short and not cruel. In contrast, non-territorialmales used fights considerably more often, especially during the "false" rut in April-May, when these males hadthe most frequent aggressive demonstrations. Their fights were usually long and playful. Non-territorial malesaddressed their aggressive noncontact displays and fights most often to peers and less frequently to sub-adults. Incontrast, territorial bucks aggressively interacted most frequently with non-territorial males and significantly morerarely with peers, but the latter interactions lasted longest time. So, asymmetry in the social status of males(territorial vs. non-territorial) led to their distinctively different seasonal distribution of agonistic activity andstrategy, and territorial male goitered gazelles preferred noncontact displays avoiding straight fights in theiragonistic interactions with peers, while non-territorial males fought readily though agonistic noncontact displays remained important part of their agonistic behavior.
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