News Finding: For the reintroduced bighorn sheep herds, it took them 40 years to become accustomed to their new habitat and become 80 percent migratory.
Paper Finding: Because individuals from migratory populations failed to migrate when translocated into landscapes where they had no prior experience, genes are unlikely to be the primary agent underlying ungulate migration.
News Context: From Generation To Generation
  
  The study also found that ungulate herds are more likely to migrate if they have mastered how to surf the green wave, but that takes a lot of practice that spans decades. For the reintroduced bighorn sheep herds, it took them 40 years to become accustomed to their new habitat and become 80 percent migratory. "These results indicate that ungulates accumulate knowledge of their landscapes over time, and cultural transmission of this knowledge is necessary for migrations to arise and persist," added Jesmer.
Paper Context: The seven translocated individuals that migrated were translocated into existing populations of bighorn sheep (<200 individuals) that had been reestablished three decades before (SM), suggesting cultural transmission of migratory behavior among conspecifics (horizontal transmission). Because individuals from migratory populations failed to migrate when translocated into landscapes where they had no prior experience, genes are unlikely to be the primary agent underlying ungulate migration. By doing so, we were able to quantify how much knowledge individuals possessed about local patterns of phenology ( fig.