Have you ever seen a gazelle launch itself straight up into the air when a cheetah or African wild dog appears? This vertical jumping behavior is called stotting, or pronking, and it seems like a terrible survival strategy. Why would a prey animal waste energy and make itself more visible instead of running away immediately? This Think Bigger short breaks down the science of stotting and explains how jumping actually saves Thomson's gazelles from becoming a predator's next meal. We examine the 1986 behavioral study by zoologist Tim Caro, which tested 11 different hypotheses for why gazelles stot. While it initially looked like the gazelle was simply signaling "I see you" to stealth predators like cheetahs, researchers Clare FitzGibbon and John Fanshawe later uncovered the full picture by observing African wild dogs. Stotting acts as an honest signal of fitness.
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