Slash Star and the harems of Shackleford 



"C^ or the first four years of his life, the colt Slash 

 Star has roamed the grassy swales and marshes 

 of Shackleford Banks with the herd — the harem — of 

 his father. Now it is time for him to leave and make 

 his own way. 



He gallops past the dunes, over the tough 

 cordgrass, stopping once to paw the damp sand and 

 sip fresh water as it collects in the hole. Soon he 

 reaches the limit of his father's domain, a line 

 marked only by a few low shrubs, some piles of dung. 

 He crosses the border. 



For several days he lingers there, grazing on the 

 fringes of another stallion's territory. The stallion 

 glares out through a shock of wiry mane; he herds his 

 harem away from the intruder. Slash Star grows 

 bolder, grazing nearer to the herd. 



Suddenly, the stallion charges, head up, his flaxen 

 mane waving like a banner. His ruddy coat is stiff 

 with salt spray. His flanks are scarred. As he meets 

 the colt they snort, wheel, lay back their ears and 

 mark the ground with their scent. Soon their hooves 

 are flying, the stallion rearing high to flail the air. 



There is no clear winner. Slash Star is agile and ex- 

 ceptionally strong, but the older stallion has earned 

 his place with skill and savvy. After several days of 

 testing one another, the stallion holds his ground, 

 but cannot run the colt away. 



At last, they reach an understanding. Slash Star 

 can stay, but only as the stallion's helper, an appren- 

 tice. He will have no mares of his own. 



Things go smoothly for several months. Day after 

 day, Slash Star charges out to help defend the 

 harem's borders. Sometimes the fights are vicious; 

 his bleeding jaws sting when he drinks in the salt 



Photo by Neil Caudle 

 % 



marsh. The stallion fights too, but now he has more 

 time to rest, to graze, to groom his herd. The colt is 

 learning to fight. 



One day, when the older stallion is away defending 

 their border, Slash Star mates with one of the mares. 

 When the stallion returns, he too mates with the 

 mare, as if reclaiming her. 



Slash Star has broken the pact, and he will again. 

 Before very long, he and the harem leader will battle 

 for control of the herd. The loser will be banished. 



Stallion wearing the scars of battle 



The story of Slash Star first appeared, not in the 

 pages of romantic fiction, but in a scientific journal. 

 The original account of his coming-of-age, written in 

 the more objective and scholarly prose of a scientist 

 writing for scientists, was the work of Daniel 

 Rubenstein, a Princeton University biologist who 

 specializes in behavioral ecology — the study of how 

 animals' behavior relates to their environment. 



For the past ten years, Rubenstein has spent much 

 of his free time on Shackleford Banks, traipsing the 

 sands and wading the marshes with his students, 

 jotting notes about the wild ways of the 100 or so 

 feral horses there. He knows them all, he says, by 

 their markings and by the names he gives them — Big 

 Red, Slash Star, Squiggle Face and JJ. And he calls 

 the social order among Shackleford horses "unique." 



"The horses there set up territories and defend 

 them," Rubenstein says. "They don't do that 

 anywhere else. Shackleford is a natural laboratory of 

 animal behavior." 



Each year since he first studied the island as a 

 graduate student from Duke University, Rubenstein 

 has watched the harem leaders defend their borders, 

 which never shifted more than fifteen or twenty 

 meters. Then, in 1980, the laboratory turned upside 

 down. What happened on Shackleford was nothing 

 short of revolution — the violent overthrow of a great 

 social order. 



"The harem leaders were getting older, and at the 

 same time there was an increase in the number of 

 bachelor males," Rubenstein says. "Some of the 

 young turks took over, threw the old stallions out, 

 and divided the mares up among them. Now there 

 are no big harems and no territories, only small herds 

 and overlapping ranges." 



But Rubenstein expects to see the territories 

 reassert themselves. 



"My hypothesis is that the strongest of the 

 stallions will begin to take mares away from the rest, 

 and when it's economical, they'll set up the 

 territories again." 



