Felid reproduction and Society

Question 1

Female estrus cues

Answer 1

Behavior
Scent Markings
Voalization

Question 2

Estrus: Domestic cats

Answer 2

Estrus -Every two weeks for 9 months

•Can reproduce as early as 4 months of a

Question 3

Estrus

Answer 3

The period of receptivity to mating, and is linked with the production of estrodial(a type of estrogen) produced by ovarian follicles.

Question 4

Estrus: Small Cats

Answer 4

• Specific time frame

* Few weeks

Question 5

Spontaneous Ovulator

Answer 5

Lion*
Clouded Leopard
Pallas's cat
Leopard
Fishing Cat
Margay

Question 6

Induced Ovulator

Answer 6

Tiger
Cheetah
Puma
Snow Leopard
Tigrina
Ocelot
Domestic Cat

Question 7

Domestic cat FEMALES

Answer 7

Induced ovulators (so are koalas, goats, and wolverines!!)
•She will not ovulate until stimulated
•Can produce single litter with multiple paternity

Question 8

Domestic cat MALES

Answer 8

Penis has >100 backward-pointing spines•Stimulates ovulation in female
•Means the first male that breeds triggers ovulation but most likely will not be the one (or one of several) that fertilizes the eggs
•Fertilized eggs arrive in the uterus 4-5 days later

Question 9

Territorial

Answer 9

• Repeatedly mate with females within territory•Serves two purposes
• Keeps other males away
• Increases chance of being sire to all offspring
• Downside: male can’t be everywhere at once, leaving females unguarded

Question 10

Fertilization

Answer 10

•In-vitro fertilization
•In vitro fertilization (IVF)
•The term ‘in vitro’ comes from the Latin meaning in
glass
•Now ‘in vitro’ is used for any biological procedure performed outside the naturally occurring organism •Egg fertilized outside body
•Zygote (fertilized egg) transferred into uterus
•Artificial insemination (AI)
•Deliberate introduction of semen into female
vagina or oviduc

Question 11

Superfecundation

Answer 11

• The fertilization of two or more ova discharged at the same ovulation by successive acts of copulation
• Kittens are fully related to the female (of course) but it may be that only some are related to resident male

Question 12

Kittens or Cubs?

Answer 12

• Juvenile big cats = cubs

* Domestic cats, ocelot, lynx have kittens

Question 13

Gestation

Answer 13

• The number of days a female cat is pregnant
• See your individual cat slides for gestation length (pg69 of SWC)
• Bigger cats = Longer gestation
• Smaller cats= shorter gestation
• Cats become more wary and shy before giving birth, often in dens

Question 14

Prey Size

Answer 14

•Unlike canids, prey of felids scaled to energy expenditure and what individual can capture (of course, lions are the exception)
•Individual body size will also dictate how many of the prey item the felid would need.
•This in turn dictates the size of the home range.
•The larger the predator, the larger the home range.
•Larger home ranges = larger conspecifics
overlapping

Question 15

Social Structures

Answer 15

• Most adult cats live solitary lives EXCEPT during mating season
• Domestic cats = groups/colonies
• The experience of zoos demonstrates that some cats living in limited space are able to shift from solitude to sociality if food is sufficient. (tigers)
• Fun Fact: Age at sexual maturity occurs later and litter weight (litter size times birth weight) is heavier in communal carnivores than solitary species

Question 16

Spatial Group

Answer 16

• Carrand MacDonald (1986) –situation where overlap of individual’s home ranges is sufficiently non-random to suggest social congruency (or aggregation at clumped resource)
• Range overlap in itself is not a reliable indicator of tendency to sociality. There are ways that overlap is due to environmental factors.
• Radio collared cats were seldom found together, overlap occurring in space but not in time.
• Overlap may or may not be evidence of amicability.
• Encounters between ocelot males is often deadly.
• Overlap is often driven by kin relation and can change as the youngsters age and move further away

Question 17

Social Structures: Lions

Answer 17

• Lions= prides. As many as 3 males, and lionesses average 4-6, but can be as large as 20. The benefits of sociality appear to break down in prides of more than 10 adult females.
• There may be extensive overlap at the territory peripheries but not at the cores.
• In the Serengeti, the mean number of adults in each pride is 1.5 males and 4.8 females.
• Larger prides undergo fission-fusion dynamics, splitting into sub-prides that may be scattered throughout the pride’s range.
• Males in both Indian and African lions rarely hunt or feed with females. Prey of females is small and not readily shared

Question 18

Benefits of Prides

Answer 18

•Cooperative hunting
•During times of prey abundance, group size had not
relation to food intake.
•In times of prey scarcity, solitaries and subgroups of
5-6 do equally well, while subgroups of 2-4 suffer in
terms of food intake.
•Social grouping in lions was not tightly associated
with increased foraging success, especially with
smaller prides.
•George Schaller concluded in 1972 that the optimum
size of a lion hunting party was two.
•Cooperative defense of prey
•Cooperative defense of mates
•Cooperative care of young
•Communal nursing confers no net nutritional benefit
on the cubs and therefore argues that the behavior
has evolved secondarily to other factors-defense
against infanticide-making it advantageous to keep
young together
•Cooperative defense of territory
•Downfall: The necessity of defending their prides
restricts the capacity of territorial males to hunt
beyond their territories and there is a great
incentive for dispersers to bulk-up to maximize their
chances as contenders in pride takeovers

Question 19

Infanticide

Answer 19

•In Lions: Infanticide accounts for 27% of cub mortality in the Serengeti and prides of two or more females have a better chance fighting off males.
•The higher success of 3-10 member prides is the
less risk of being taken over by a new
male.
•Suggestions have been made that neighboring
females may accidentally kill dependent cubs in
group encounters and consume the infants; but
deliberate infanticide by non-pride females is
difficult to demonstrate

Question 20

Social Structures–Cheetahs

Answer 20

• Cheetahs = Mother cheetah leaves cubs at ~ 18 moold. Cubs band together for another 6 months. At 2 yeas old, females set off on their own, males siblings stay together. IF there is only 1 male, he finds other males to join with. (Coalitions are up to 3 males)
• Female cheetahs may adopt cubs if their own litter is of a similar age. (esp. if female cubs)•Adolescent males rely strongly on their sisters to catch prey for the group.
• In Serengeti, females occupy large overlapping ranges, where males maintain smaller areas
• Molecular studies showed that the Namibian females were highly promiscuous and showed high levels of multiple paternity and no evidence of mate fidelity between reproductive seasons.
• Members of coalitions of male cheetahs in the Serengeti plains preferred larger prey but they displayed little coordination when hunting.
• They seemed to spend longer than singletons in pursuit of larger prey.
• In Namibia, coalitions of male cheetahs selected for dense, prey-rich habitat, but this preference was not apparent for other social grouping

Question 21

Dispersal of Young

Answer 21

•Felids under 10 kg disperse and breed as yearlings.
•Those between 10-35 kg disperse in time to breed as 2 yrolds.
•Largest felids disperse at 3-4 yrs.
•In Studies:•Bobcats and lynx disperse at 10 months
but Iberian lynx disperse at 12-24 months.
•Pumas ~15 months•Amur tigers ~18.8
months
•Serengeti lionesses at 3-4 yrs.
•However, these ages ignore whether the offspring
just shuffle next door or travel further distances

Question 22

Dispersal of Young–Lions

Answer 22

•In lions, all males disperse whereas females generally do not.
•The third of females that do generally just shuffle next door before their 4thbirthday.
•This is triggered by incoming male coalitions or adult females giving birth to new cubs.
•Coalition males may also abandon one pride for
another.
•In such cases, they will abandon small cubs for a
larger number of girls but they abandon more
females for fewer if their daughters are becoming
sexually mature

Question 23

Odors

Answer 23

• Marking occurs within an individual’s home range and enables individuals to avoid each other or contribute to territoriality.
• Both sexes deploy urine by spraying or squatting; in domestic felids we know that they have an individual signature and it is assumed that this is also the case in exotics.
• Scent enables individuals to timeshare their use of space.
• In domestics, facial rubbing flows predominantly from subordinate to dominant animals.
• Except for female servals, both sexes have been seen spraying urine
• Domestic cats bury fecal matter
• Some cats (Bobcat and Lynx) known to defecate and urinate in flowing water to move scent downstream.

Question 24

Verbal Communication

Answer 24

•Felids have a variety of distinct vocalizations (3-10 distinct)
•Lions and domestic cat = long range
•In lions, males will only roar within their territory or
when they are prepared to fight.
•Nomads are less likely to engage in this expensive
behavior.
•Lionesses are less likely to advance to the sound of
a group of 3 or more
•Purring is at the lower limit of felid hearing, and is tactile as well as auditory signal.

Question 25

Catnip!

Answer 25

•Nepetacataria, catnip, is highly attractive to cats, an inherited response as a dominant autosomal gene.
•The rubbing and rolling behavior is similar to that seen in estrus females and appears to take their mind off prey and onto sex.
•Experiments with catnip in zoos:
•Lions and jaguars reacted most strongly (sexually
mature adults had the most strong reaction
•Tigers, cougars, bobcats less strongly
•Cheetahs did not approach catnip•Domestic cats
stop reacting at around 15 min, big cats reacted over
an hour