Abstract: Social animals keep uniform actions about direction of motion and departure time during collective movement by leader-follower model, and the model has been chosen in the evolution process. Most of recent studies focus on leadership and its influence on collective movements, but less of them explore the follower aspects. To probe into the relationship between followers and collective movements, we conducted a study on the joining process in a group of free-ranging Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) at Huangshan, China, using all occurrences recording, focal animal sampling and ad libitum sampling. Results showed that follower′s number and age had no effect on collective movement, but centrality coefficient, social rank and the coefficient of relatedness had positive correlations with collective movements. Our study might provide a new perspective on how to achieve group cohesion in social animals.

Key words: Tibetan macaques, collective movement, follow, characteristics