The African savannah is a grassland ecosystem spanning at least 14 countries, from South Sudan and Ethiopia, through eastern and southern Africa to South Africa, an area of approximately 6 500 00 km², or around 5% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. As with all ecosystems on the planet, the African savannah is under imminent threat of destruction due to increasing human activities. The African savannah ecosystem is home to many iconic large mammals, such as African elephants, black and white rhinoceroses and African lions, with the general health of this ecosystem being dependent upon the annual mass migrations of large herbivores, such as the blue wildebeest in the Serengeti (Homewood et al., 2001). Developing appropriate and practical approaches that can conserve this ecosystem is a difficult task, but in the case of the African savannah, with the mass migrations in mind, recent findings on a specific aspect of the brain of the plains zebra may prove crucial to the development of a coordinated and large-scale conservation plan for this ecosystem. Securing the longevity of this vast and important ecosystem will have positive global implications related to the conservation of biodiversity, mitigation of human-induced climate change, lowering the potential for zoonotic disease transmission, and can identify opportunities that can contribute to regional human development goals and aspirations (add links here).

       At present we know of four mass migrations on the African savannah, all of which involve the plains zebra, Equus quagga (two in South Sudan with white-eared kob and tiang antelopes, the Serengeti with blue wildebeest, and in Botswana by just the plains zebra, Naidoo et al., 2016). Our unpublished studies of the brain of the plains zebra indicate that this species has the largest, and potentially most specialized/complex, neural navigation system of all mammals. This neural navigation system, an inbuilt “GPS system” (O’Keefe and Conway, 1978; Hafting et al., 2005; Stensola et al., 2012), allows the animal to know where it is, where it has been, and to consider options and make plans about where to go next based on landmarks in its environment. That this system appears highly specialized in the plains zebra (similar to what has been observed in London cabbies who are navigational experts, Maguire et al., 2000), and that all the known terrestrial migrations on the savannah involve plains zebra, indicates that the plains zebras may be the initiators, leaders and navigators of these migrations, with the other migratory species only needing to know that they must follow the plains zebra to survive and flourish (see short video clip below). This observation makes the plains zebra a uniquely positioned umbrella species for the African savannah ecosystem and indicates that a large-scale study will show that the plains zebra is arguably the best available natural model for conservation efforts aimed at maintaining this globally important wilderness and the migrations that form the core of this ecosystem that has global implications.