Why are fences so provoking? Fences are not only a convenient tool for structure. Fencing also tells a story about power, exclusion and social dynamics.

If you go for a Sunday bike ride out into the Danish landscape, you will likely realise that you cannot simply cross through areas that do not follow the main roads.

Windbreaks, dikes and fences cut through the landscape in various formations. In many places, ploughing goes all the way to the edges. Elsewhere, old roads have been removed, making it challenging to move around freely.

In fact, Denmark is among the world's most divided and demarcated countries, and if you look beyond Denmark's borders, studies show that there are up to 10 times as many fences in the world as there are roads.

We have studied how fences and boundaries come about and tried to find out how it affects humans and animals when markings and boundaries on a map are transformed into physical fences. We did this by looking at two case studies in East Africa, specifically in on the Laikipia Plateau and in the Maasai Mara in Kenya's Rift Valley region.