Ecologists have turned to computer scientists to develop dynamic graphs of social behavior among Zebra populations, revealing why some are thriving while others are endangered:

The difference showed that the Grevy's zebras tended to hang out in cliques, whereas the onagers spent time with different buddies on different days.

The methods developed turn out to applicable to human networks, too:

In the meantime, Berger-Wolf is testing her methods on other datasets, including the records of e-mails exchanged at Enron that became available after they were subpoenaed. She has found some surprising connections between the two kinds of networks.

"We can see that our method to detect when a lion was in the area of zebras detects very well when the subpoena was issued at Enron," she says. When faced with a lion, the zebras flee and follow one lead zebra. Similarly, after the subpoena was issued, e-mail traffic to the lawyers increased dramatically.

When threatened by a lion, call for the sharks! cool