Lecture 30 Flashcards
What is the largest and what is the smallest kind of cat and how many cat species are there?
- Felidae family consists of 37 species
- Tiger is the largest, and rusty-spotted cat is the smallest
What are the exceptions to when felines are not solitary and territorial?
- Mating
- Kitten rearing
- play
Which felines are the only ones with social behaviour?
- Cheetahs
- African Lions
- Domestic cats
What is social behaviour in cheetahs like?
- Litters remain together until they become 6 month old when females disperse
- Males mostly remain with siblings for the rest of their lives
- Better defense of territory: better monopolization of females
- Increased survival
- Decrease predation by lions
- Larger prey size: team work
- Inclusive fitness theory
What is the social behaviour for female kinships in lions like?
- All females breed, unlike other felines
- Cubs are kept hidden for 6 weeks before introducing them to the pride - bonding, recognition, protect cubs
- Highly cooperative: mothers take care of their cubs together
- Control of another’s reproductive success through aggression would most likely disadvantage both parties
What is the social behaviour for male groups in lions like?
- Male siblings remain in groups and compete for females with other groups
- Offspring of previous groups are killed when former males are displaced (infanticide)
- Groups of males may associated with one or more groups of females
- Males displace females and younger animals when feeding (males eat first)
- Advantages: defense of territories with reliable and abundant supplies of prey
How does the social behaviour of lions differ from other felines?
Lions are the most socially complex felines known: females and males live in group. Everyone breeds, reducing competition
What is the social behaviour in Felis Silvestris wildcat?
- No group living besides mothers and offspring
- Strongly territorial but not asocial
- Communication with neighbouring territories due to scent
- Wild cats do not adopt group living even if enough resources are available
What is the wild cat and what is the subspecies that is closest to the domestic cat?
Wild cat - Felis silvestric
* mitochondrial DNA of F.s. catus (domestic cat) is almost identical to F.s. Lybica (Arabia or North Africa)
What is the history of domestication for the cat?
- Wildcats and domestic cats split about 10,000 years ago
- Socialization might have started with the creation of man-made grain stores
- Expansion of house mouse
- Introducation of cats into urban areas to control mice populations
-followed by a reductionin flight responce to humans - Reproductive isolation of cats associated with human settlements
Concentration of prey large enough to support more than a female and their offspring - Intraspecific sociality became adaptive to secure good quality territories with a consistent food supply
What is the social behaviour in female F. Silvertris catus?
- Remarkable degree of flexibility in their social arrangements
- Free-living females build colonies with siblings and their kittens dependent on Population density, distribution of suitable territories, availability of suitable mates, and the cost-benefit relationship of assisting kin
Dominance hierarchy
* Adults are both breeders and helpers
* Mothers recognize their offspring but also take care of unrelated kittens
* Feeding priority is given to juveniles under 1 year old
What are the benefits for feral cats who are in group living?
- Reduce competition with other females
- Protection from males
- Protection from predators
- Defense of good territories (food and shelter)
- Better use of resources
- Shared information
What is a disadvantage to feral cats living in groups?
transmission of viruses
What is the social behaviour in male F. Silvertris catus?
- Strong territoriality
- Free-living males older than 1 year become solitary
- No coalitions are formed (unlike cheetahs or lions)
- Fight for mates
- Temporal associations of males with female
- colonies
- No infanticides because they dont recognize their own
What is the key requirements for socialization?
Communication and recognition
What situations cause communication in cats?
- Mating
- Mother-kitten relationships
- Play behaviour
What are the different communication signals that cats use?
- Except for agonistic or mother-kitten relationship, colonies are remarkably silent
- Cats territoriality and can be lethal
- Agonistic and affiliative signals developed to avoid fights
Scent marking
* Scent and pheromone producing organs
* Highly sensitive nose
* Vomeronasal organ receptor: located at the rood of the mouth and connects both the nasal and oral cavities
What is agonistic behaviour in cats?
- Fight is the last resource
- Agonistic behaviour
- Staring, horizontal tail, lashing of the tail, assuming threatening postures to maximize body appearance, ritualized vocal duels, baring of canines, striking a paw, biting, non-sexual mount, chasing
- Submissive signals:
- Avoidance, elevation, crouching, retreat, rolling
What is affiliative behaviour in cats?
- It is sexually dimorphic
- Between adult females
- Males keep apart and roam by themselves from group to group
- It likely originates from mother-kitten behaviour
- Allogrooming Hygiene
- Tail up and head rubbing: greeting or food solicitation
- Colonies formation promoted the evolution of ritualized signals for affiliation among adults
What are affiliative behaviour signals in cats?
- Tail Up posture: usually initiated by the younger, smaller cat, or females
- Precedes other affiliative signals
- Allorub: exchange of odour
- Allogroom
- Social sniff
- There are at least 40 different chemical substances in facial secretion and only 13 are common among all cats
What is mating behaviour in cats?
Highly stereotyped and conspicuous sequence of events
* Calling to attract males
* Rolling around on belly and back
* Holding her tail to the side to expose genitalia
* Excessive affection
* Excessive rubbing against inanimate objects: scent and pheromones
What is the mother-kitten relationship?
- Prenatal phase: kitten’s preference for food that the mother ate during pregnancy
- 0-2wks: Early stage of development: dependent on mother. Touch, taste and smell
- 3-8/9 wks: mobility and some independence. Critical period of socialization
- Mothers clean their kittens
- Call their mother
- Display the Tail Up signal when they see their mother
- Head rubbing
What is play behaviour in cats?
- Primarily a juvenile activity
- Social play increases from week 4 to week 12 after birth, and then it decreases
- In the absence of littermates a kitten will try to play with its mother
- Isolated kittens might not learn how to play, hindering their social communication skills - aggression
What is the relationship like between humans and cats?
- evidence from 2000 - 4000 years ago in egypt
- Communication with humans includes visual, tactile, and auditory signals
What are the visual signals that cats use?
- Tail Up posture
- No eye contact
- Position of the external ears
- Subtle tail movements
- Other learned behaviours:
- Jumping up, swiping with paw, etc
What are the tactiles of companion cats?
- Rubbing
- Licking
- Kneading
What are the auditory signals that cats use?
- Meowing: used to attract human attention, and with varied repertoire depending on the situation. Very rare in colonies
- Purring: calming and to maintain contact
What are the implications for cat welfare?
- Cohabiting indoor cats tend to be aggressive with each other
- Usually unidirectional
- Reduced if they are related or grew together
- Obligated proximity with other cats
- Territoriality
What are signals of stress in cats?
- Displacement (blocking resources)
- Grooming
- Scratching
- Exaggerated swallowing
- Head shaking
- Excessive soiling
