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Tiger - Panthera tigris
Topic Started: Jan 7 2012, 08:50 PM (34,934 Views)
Asadas
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Herbivore
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Panthera tigris soloensis
Jan 4 2013, 08:32 AM
Russia leopard mission collars massive tiger
An extremely rare Amur tiger captured in a remote area of Russia by an international research team searching for the even rarer Amur leopard has boosted the chances of saving both species from extinction.

Capture and examination of the huge male tiger was a major success, said big cat specialist vet Dr John Lewis, WVI co-founder and director and on the team in far eastern Russia in autumn 2011. He explained: “We need to catch, assess and radio collar tigers as well as leopards if we are to discover how they co-exist.

“Tigers are present in the proposed leopard reintroduction area and we must know the risks for any leopards released there. Infectious diseases affecting tigers can equally affect leopards so health screening has major conservation relevance for both animals.” (See Our Project)

His work on the Amur leopard – the world’s most endangered big cat with as few as 25 left in the wild – positions WVI as the key veterinary support in the programme to save it from extinction in the wild.

Text messages, from an area notorious for poor communications, illustrate the tiger capture build-up: “Fresh tiger prints 1km from camp this morning! Think we are getting closer”, followed by a triumphant; “Caught large male tiger!”

The tiger, one of just 450 remaining, was anesthetised for examination and released with a GPS tracking collar. It is the only traceable individual in the area, he believes, after signals from previously collared tigers have been lost.

Leopards were heard close to camp and traces found on aptly-named Leopard Ridge, but none captured. Two large black Asiatic bear were also been captured and data logged.

The team, including young Russian field vet Dr. Mr Mikhail Gonchuruk, spent two months tracking the elusive, solitary and nocturnal Amur leopard before temperatures plummeted below -20 degrees centigrade, inhibiting their sensitive immobilising leg snares.



WVI needs to raise £25K a year to continue its Amur leopard project support – likely to increase as the breeding and release phases get closer. Donate now.

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One can view these photos directly from the source by clicking on the image of the tiger in the article.

Article:
http://wvi.whimwhamsites.co.uk/russia-leopard-mission-collars-massive-tiger/
205 kg was his official weight, scientist confirmed. A 250kg Siberian would "appear" arger by skull and size.

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Tigris
Unicellular Organism
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The most recent subspecies of Tiger are nine and the South China Tiger is not extinct.

The Siberian Tiger and the Bengal Tiger are bigger and more stronger than any Lion alive.
Edited by Tigris, Sep 2 2013, 02:03 PM.
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Taipan
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Growling tiger, fleeing elephant

September 11, 2013

Wild Asian elephants slink quietly away at the sound of a growling tiger, but trumpet and growl before retreating from leopard growls, researchers at the University of California, Davis, have found. The work, published Sept. 11 in the journal Biology Letters, could help Indian farmers protect their crops from marauding elephants and save the lives of both people and animals.

"We noticed that the elephants were more scared of tigers than of leopards," said Vivek Thuppil, who carried out the work with Richard Coss, professor of psychology at UC Davis, as part of his Ph.D. in animal behavior.

Thuppil and Coss studied the elephants' behavior in an effort to prevent conflicts between human farmers and elephant herds that raid their fields by night. It's the first study of nighttime antipredator behavior in elephants.

Crop raiding by elephants is a serious problem in India, Thuppil said. Farmers use drums, firecrackers and electrified fences to try to keep them out of their crops. About 400 people a year are killed during these encounters, and some hundred elephants are killed through poisoning, electrocution or other means, according to an Indian government report.

The researchers set up equipment to play back leopard or tiger growls triggered when the elephants crossed infrared beams across paths leading to crop fields, and captured the events on video.

Leopards aren't known to prey on elephants, but tigers will sometimes attack a young elephant that becomes separated from the herd.

Although their initial reactions were very different, the elephants ultimately retreated from growls of both cats.

The elephants might be confused by the leopard growl, Thuppil said. A real leopard would most likely retreat from a group of elephants. Still, there's probably no benefit to the elephants in risking an encounter with a leopard, even if it is not a known predator.

"You don't want to mess with something with claws and teeth," Thuppil said.

"They're acting in a very intelligent way," Coss said.

Wild elephant populations are stable or even increasing in forest areas, Thuppil said. While the forest itself is protected, human settlement increasingly has moved into the buffer areas surrounding the forest, which elephants pass through while foraging or visiting different patches of forest.

The work was supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Asian Elephant Conservation Fund and the Rufford Small Grants Foundation.


Elephant group reacts to leopard growl


Elephant bolts from tiger growl

http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10717




Vivek Thuppil and Richard G. Coss
Wild Asian elephants distinguish aggressive tiger and leopard growls according to perceived danger
Biol. Lett.. 2013 9 20130518; doi:10.1098/rsbl.2013.0518 (published 11 September 2013)

Abstract
Prey species exhibit antipredator behaviours such as alertness, aggression and flight, among others, in response to predators. The nature of this response is variable, with animals reacting more strongly in situations of increased vulnerability. Our research described here is the first formal study to investigate night-time antipredator behaviour in any species of elephants, Asian or African. We examined the provocative effects of elephant-triggered tiger and leopard growls while elephants attempted to crop-raid. Tigers opportunistically prey on elephant calves, whereas leopards pose no threat; therefore, we predicted that the elephant response would be reflective of this difference. Elephants reacted similarly cautiously to the simulated presence of felids of both species by eventually moving away, but differed markedly in their more immediate behavioural responses. Elephants retreated silently to tiger-growl playbacks, whereas they responded with aggressive vocalizations, such as trumpets and grunts, to leopard-growl playbacks. Elephants also lingered in the area and displayed alert or investigative behaviours in response to leopard growls when compared with tiger growls. We anticipate that the methods outlined here will promote further study of elephant antipredator behaviour in a naturalistic context, with applications for conservation efforts as well.

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/5/20130518.abstract
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Taipan
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Evolution of a Predator: How Big Cats Became Carnivores

By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | September 17, 2013 11:00am ET

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The Siberian tiger, also known as Panthera tigris altaica

The biggest and perhaps most fearsome of the world's big cats, the tiger shares 95.6 percent of its DNA with humans' cute and furry companions, domestic cats.

That's one of the findings from the newly sequenced genomes of tigers, snow leopards and lions.

The new research showed that big cats have genetic mutations that enabled them to be carnivores. The team also identified mutations that allow snow leopards to thrive at high altitudes.

The findings, detailed today (Sept. 17) in the journal Nature Communications, could help conservation efforts by preventing closely related captive animals from breeding, said Jong Bhak, a geneticist at the Personal Genomics Institute in South Korea.

Lions and tigers

Tigers are the biggest members of the cat family and are closely related to other big cats, such as snow leopards and lions. The predatory felines are critically endangered, and only 3,050 to 3,950 tigers are thought to remain in the wild. Without tiger conservation, most scientists believe the iconic orange cats will eventually go extinct.

To aid those efforts, Bhak and his colleagues sequenced the genome of a 9-year-old Amur tiger living in the Everland Zoo in South Korea. The team also acquired DNA from around the world and compared the Amur tiger genome with that of the white Bengal tiger, the African lion, the white African lion and the snow leopard.

The tiger shares 95.6 percent of its genome with the domestic cat, from which it diverged about 10.8 million years ago, the comparison showed.

In addition, several genes were altered in metabolic pathways associated with protein digestion and metabolism, or how the body uses fuel like food to power cells. Those changes, which evolved over tens of millions of years, likely enable the majestic felines to digest and rely solely on meat, Bhak said.

Big cats also have several mutations that make for powerful, fast-acting muscles — a necessity when chasing down prey.

The team also found two genes in the snow leopard that allow it to thrive in the low-oxygen conditions of its high-altitude habitat in the Himalayan Mountains. Those genetic changes are similar to ones found in the naked mole rat, which also lives in low-oxygen conditions, though underground. In addition, the genetic analysis identified the mutations that give Bengal tigers and white African lions their distinctive white coats, Bhak said.

The new results could aid conservation efforts by giving scientists a tool to estimate genetic diversity in the wild.

By sequencing the genomes of tigers and other endangered cats like snow leopards, "we can find whether they are inbreeding," Bhak told LiveScience. "If their population diversity is very low, then one flu virus can kill a lot of them quickly, because they have the same genetic makeup."

Scientists can then take measures to introduce fresh blood into the population, which could make it more resilient.

The genomes can also aid captive breeding programs by helping zoos choose animals that aren't closely related for mating, he added.

http://www.livescience.com/39695-tiger-lion-leopard-genome-sequenced.html




The tiger genome and comparative analysis with lion and snow leopard genomes

Yun Sung Cho, Li Hu, Haolong Hou, Hang Lee, Jiaohui Xu, Soowhan Kwon, Sukhun Oh, Hak-Min Kim, Sungwoong Jho, Sangsoo Kim, Young-Ah Shin, Byung Chul Kim, Hyunmin Kim, Chang-uk Kim, Shu-Jin Luo, Warren E. Johnson, Klaus-Peter Koepfli, Anne Schmidt-Küntzel, Jason A. Turner, Laurie Marker et al.

Nature Communications 4, Article number: 2433 doi:10.1038/ncomms3433
Received 02 May 2013 Accepted 13 August 2013 Published 17 September 2013

Abstract
Tigers and their close relatives (Panthera) are some of the world’s most endangered species. Here we report the de novo assembly of an Amur tiger whole-genome sequence as well as the genomic sequences of a white Bengal tiger, African lion, white African lion and snow leopard. Through comparative genetic analyses of these genomes, we find genetic signatures that may reflect molecular adaptations consistent with the big cats’ hypercarnivorous diet and muscle strength. We report a snow leopard-specific genetic determinant in EGLN1 (Met39>Lys39), which is likely to be associated with adaptation to high altitude. We also detect a TYR260G>A mutation likely responsible for the white lion coat colour. Tiger and cat genomes show similar repeat composition and an appreciably conserved synteny. Genomic data from the five big cats provide an invaluable resource for resolving easily identifiable phenotypes evident in very close, but distinct, species.

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(a) Orthologous gene clusters in mammalian species. The Venn diagram shows the number of unique and shared gene families among seven mammalian genomes. (b) Gene expansion or contraction in the tiger genome. Numbers designate the number of gene families that have expanded (green, +) and contracted (red, −) after the split from the common ancestor. The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) has 17,841 gene families. The time lines indicate divergence times among the species.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130917/ncomms3433/full/ncomms3433.html
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R.E.D.
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Are Tigers 'Brainier' Than Lions?

Date:
September 13, 2009

Source:
University of Oxford

A wide-ranging study of big cat skulls, led by Oxford University scientists, has shown that tigers have bigger brains, relative to their body size, than lions, leopards or jaguars.

The team investigated the relationship between the skull size – the longest length between the front and back parts of the skull – of a large sample of tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars and the volume inside the cats’ respective craniums. The researchers report their findings in this month’s Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
'What we had not expected is that the tiger has clearly much bigger relative brain size than do the other three species, which all have similar relative brain sizes,’ said Dr Nobby Yamaguchi of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), an author of the report with WildCRU Director Professor David Macdonald.
‘When we compare the two biggest species, on average the lion has a bigger skull than the tiger based on the greatest length of the skull. However, the tiger has bigger cranial volume than the lion. It is truly amazing that tiny female Balinese tiger skulls have cranial volumes as large as those of huge male southern African lion skulls.’
It has sometimes been assumed that social species, such as lions, should have larger brains than solitary species, such as tigers, because of the need to handle a more complex social life within groups or prides. However, despite a few studies suggesting a relationship between big brains and sociality in mammals, evidence for the link is far from clear.
Dr Nobby Yamaguchi said: ‘Our results strongly suggest that there is no detectable positive relationship between relative brain size and sociality amongst these four big cat species, which shared a common ancestor around 3.7 million years ago.’
The team also looked at the popular idea that tigers are ‘bigger’ than lions (which could mean that the tiger’s relatively bigger brain size simply reflects its bigger body). However, careful re-evaluation of original field data and relatively well-documented hunting records does not support this idea.
So the team concluded that the tigers have a relatively bigger brain (around 16 per cent larger) than lions, given their very similar average body sizes.
Professor Macdonald said: ‘Two general lessons emerge from our findings: first, how much remains to be discovered about even these most familiar of big cats, and second how important museum collections can be as a source of unexpected insights.’
The next step for the researchers is to try to answer whether such a difference can be explained by intrageneric variation or merely by chance. If not by chance, then it raises the question why the tiger evolved a relatively bigger brain (or why other species evolved smaller brains) after the tiger’s ancestor split from the common ancestor to the other three species.
The answers to both these questions may lie in analysing comparative brain anatomy amongst these species (for instance, which parts of the tiger’s brain are bigger than the lion’s) and similar data from extinct relatives of these big cats as well as smaller living relatives such as the snow leopard and clouded leopard.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911145030.htm
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Vodmeister
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Size and weight of wild tigers

Some data on the normal weight of various subspecies of Tigers:

Amur tigers (ancient records directly from Russia).
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Recent records.
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Edited by Vodmeister, Apr 8 2014, 02:43 AM.
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Vodmeister
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Data on the populations of Bengal tigers:

From central India;
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Nepal and Northern India;
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From various sanctuaries in India;
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Heaviest record male;
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Sumatra;
The average figure for P. t. Sumatra is of 130 kg, based in a sample of 4 males (100, 130, 140 & 150 kg) from Hoogerwerf, 1970; McClure, 2003; Slaght et al., 2005.

Summary chart;
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Edited by Vodmeister, Jul 17 2014, 03:28 PM.
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Tiger
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South China tigers aren't extinct.
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Tiger
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Tigris is completely right, tigers are stronger than lions by -

31.91% in forelimbs
34.91% in backlimbs
30.10% in shoulder joints
34.07% in hip joints

That is huge amount of strength advantage to the tiger. But then again, they hold every advantage in the book.
Edited by Tiger, Apr 21 2014, 12:27 AM.
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Superpredator
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This account really impressed me, here are the key things IMO:
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TheLioness
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New Clues Suggest Javan Tiger May Not Be Extinct: Claim
Quote:
 

Jember, East Java. Its last recorded sighting was in 1976 and it was officially declared extinct in 1994, but now new evidence suggests that the Javan tiger may still be roaming the wild.

Bambang Darmadja, the head of the Meru Betiri National Park in East Java, said his office would set up five camera traps in the area to capture images of the big cat.

He said he had requested the equipment from the Forestry Ministry based on recent findings by park rangers of paw prints and droppings that suggested a large cat was roaming the forest.

“We’re going to set up those camera traps to finally resolve the question of the Javan tiger being extinct, because the evidence that we have so far, from droppings and paw prints to claw marks [on trees], suggests that it may still exist in Meru Betiri,” Bambang said.

The 58,000-hectare park, centered around Mount Betiri and straddling the districts of Jember and Banyuwangi, was the last known refuge of the Javan tiger. The last recorded sighting of the species in 1976 was made here.

The tiger, one of three subspecies of the big cat native to Indonesia, was officially declared extinct in 1994 following a survey at Meru Betiri that also included the use of 19 camera traps. No images were captured of the animal during the year-long survey.

Of the two other tiger subspecies endemic to Indonesia, only the Sumatran tiger remains, although its population in the wild is dwindling. It is categorized as critically endangered, just one step above extinction. The Bali tiger, the smallest of the subspecies, became extinct in the 1950s.

“I’m optimistic that the Javan tiger still lives in Meru Betiri,” Bambang said. “Even though none have been sighted by forest rangers or photographed by camera traps, I’m still positive.”

He added that the new set of camera traps would be installed before the end of the month, but said that the timing was far from ideal.

“The best time to set up such a survey is during the dry season, when there are a limited number of watering holes that animals go to,” he said. “That’s when we can select the best positions to set up the cameras.”

Wahyu Giri Prasetyo, an activist with the Jember Community of Nature Lovers (Kappala), said he was also optimistic about the prospect of the Javan tiger surviving to this day, citing sporadic reports over the years of findings of big cat paw prints, droppings and claw marks.

“I’ve still got a sample of droppings that I strongly believe belong to the Javan tiger that I found in 2004,” he said. “It contains hair fibers that are consistent with the medulla [hair shafts] of tiger fur.”

Wahyu added that the lack of photographic evidence or confirmed sightings did not preclude the possibility of a handful of individual tigers surviving in the wild.

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/archive/new-clues-suggest-javan-tiger-may-not-be-extinct-claim/

Quote:
 
TEMPO.CO, Malang - Many literary works state that the Javan tiger went extinct sometime between the 1950s and the 1980s. However, the existence of the tiger is actually still mysterious as many residents living near forests in Java claim to have sighted the wild animal.

"These testimonies actually give us hope that the Javan tiger is not really extinct even though our chance to see it may be extremely low," said Toni Artaka, coordinator of the Ranu Tompe Ecology Expedition and Exploration at Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, on Wednesday.

Experts were even more excited when they spotted claw marks of the carnivore on a tree last Wednesday. Based on literary works on the tiger, claw marks that large only belong to the Sumatran tiger or Javan tiger.

Aside from that, the team also discovered footprints and species of a large carnivore. Muhmudin Rahmadana, Tony’s teammate, admitted this was the first time he saw a carnivore’s feces exceed the size of a regular leopard’s feces.

TNBTS head Ayu Dewi Utari backed the statements made by her men. She said that up until now, no valid literature has confirmed the extinction of the Javan tiger. In addition, many residents claimed to have spotted the ‘striped tiger’, which is what the locals dub the Javan tiger.

http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2013/10/19/206522907/Javan-Tiger-May-Still-Exist-in-Ranu-Tompe
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Naronu
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It would be amazing if the Javan tiger still currently lives in Java.
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Taipan
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Epic tiger release in Russia is wildly successful

Program Communications Officer, IFAW Headquarters
By: Michael Booth
Posted: Fri, 06/06/2014

Celebrations are underway on both sides of the world as tigers Svetlaya and Ustin were safely released back to wild. This concludes the largest release of endangered Amur (aka Siberian) tigers in history and signals the return of the subspecies to historic tiger habitat in Russia’s Far East, a resounding victory for conservationists and animal welfare advocates.



The reintroduction of these five tigers, out of 360 remaining in the wild, is the culmination of life-saving rescues of orphaned tigers, months of rehabilitation efforts, and a smooth relocation and release involving the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Special Inspection Tiger, A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Phoenix Fund, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

To study their post-release survival, scientists are tracking the tigers using satellite technology.

--MB

http://www.ifaw.org/australia/news/video-epic-tiger-release-russia-wildly-successful
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Taipan
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Odor that smells like blood: Single component powerful trigger for large carnivores

Date: November 10, 2014
Source: Linköping University
Summary:
People find the smell of blood unpleasant, but for predatory animals it means food. When behavioral researchers wanted to find out which substances of blood trigger behavioral reactions, they got some unexpected results.

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African wild dogs compete for a log impregnated with blood or a single component. Both were equally attractive.

People find the smell of blood unpleasant, but for predatory animals it means food. When behavioural researchers at Linköping University in Sweden wanted to find out which substances of blood trigger behavioural reactions, they got some unexpected results.
Matthias Laska is professor of zoology, specialising in the sense of smell. For some time his focus has been on scents that directly affect the behaviour of animals.
"For predators, food scents are particularly attractive, and much of this has to do with blood. We wanted to find out which chemical components create the scent of blood," he says.
The study, conducted at Kolmården Wildlife Park, found that for the animals, one particular component of blood odour was just as engaging as the blood odour itself.
"It's a completely new discovery that raises interesting questions on evolution," says Prof Laska.
The study has been published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
When Prof Laska did a search for the contents of volatile substances in mammalian blood, he found nothing. Human blood has been analysed for disease markers, but we have very little information on the substances that give blood its characteristic scent.
A master's student was sent to Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlangen Germany, to analyse mammalian blood with the help of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, methods used for separating and identifying chemical compounds in a sample. The machine detected some 30 substances, of which some are decomposition products from fats. But the machine lost the job to the human scent experts who had also been engaged. They identified scents that the gas chromatograph missed completely.
One substance stood out: an aldehyde called trans-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal, which emits the typical metallic scent that humans associate with blood.
Once the researchers had identified a scent candidate that the predators should be attracted to, they wanted to test whether the predators were actually attracted to it in reality. So they designed a study to be conducted at Kolmården Wildlife Park, involving four predator species. How would the four predators -- Asian wild dogs, African wild dogs, South American bush dogs and Siberian tigers -- react when they caught a whiff of the scent?
Half-metre long wooden logs were impregnated with four different liquids: lab-produced aldehyde, horse blood, fruit essence, and a near-odourless solvent. The animals were exposed to one scent per day in their regular enclosure, while a group of students carefully observed their behaviour.
The results were unequivocal. The logs containing aldehyde were just as attractive stimuli as those containing blood, while the two other logs aroused little interest. The commonest behaviours were sniffing, licking, biting, pawing and toying. The tiger was the most persistent, while the South American bush dogs lost interest more quickly than the other species.
The study is the first to show that a single component can be just as attractive as the complex odour.
"How this has developed through evolution is an interesting question. Perhaps there is a common denominator for all mammalian blood," says Prof Laska.
He has plans for several follow-ups of the study, including how prey animals such as mice react to blood odour.
For the wildlife park, the study provided results that can be used in its daily operations. Animals in captivity require stimulation, so as not to deteriorate or become fat. The odourised logs can be a popular addition to the animal's environment.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141110150922.htm




Journal Reference:
Sara Nilsson, Johanna Sjöberg, Mats Amundin, Constanze Hartmann, Andrea Buettner, Matthias Laska. Behavioral Responses to Mammalian Blood Odor and a Blood Odor Component in Four Species of Large Carnivores. PLoS ONE, 2014; 9 (11): e112694 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0112694

Abstract
Only little is known about whether single volatile compounds are as efficient in eliciting behavioral responses in animals as the whole complex mixture of a behaviorally relevant odor. Recent studies analysing the composition of volatiles in mammalian blood, an important prey-associated odor stimulus for predators, found the odorant trans-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal to evoke a typical “metallic, blood-like” odor quality in humans. We therefore assessed the behavior of captive Asian wild dogs (Cuon alpinus), African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), South American bush dogs (Speothos venaticus), and Siberian tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) when presented with wooden logs that were impregnated either with mammalian blood or with the blood odor component trans-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal, and compared it to their behavior towards a fruity odor (iso-pentyl acetate) and a near-odorless solvent (diethyl phthalate) as control. We found that all four species displayed significantly more interactions with the odorized wooden logs such as sniffing, licking, biting, pawing, and toying, when they were impregnated with the two prey-associated odors compared to the two non-prey-associated odors. Most importantly, no significant differences were found in the number of interactions with the wooden logs impregnated with mammalian blood and the blood odor component in any of the four species. Only one of the four species, the South American bush dogs, displayed a significant decrease in the number of interactions with the odorized logs across the five sessions performed per odor stimulus. Taken together, the results demonstrate that a single blood odor component can be as efficient in eliciting behavioral responses in large carnivores as the odor of real blood, suggesting that trans-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal may be perceived by predators as a “character impact compound” of mammalian blood odor. Further, the results suggest that odorized wooden logs are a suitable manner of environmental enrichment for captive carnivores.


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http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0112694
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maker
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Bengal tiger:
I can't copy due to this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/
Link:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29987187

Siberian tiger:
Quote:
 
Amur Tiger Follows
'Putin's' Kuzya Across Border Into China

The Moscow TimesNov. 13 2014 15:09 Last edited 15:09
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The Amur tiger.
A Russian Amur tiger named Ustin has become the second out of five cats released into the wild earlier this year to cross into China in search of food, though a third tiger was stopped before it could reach the border.

Ustin, who is tagged with a tracking device, has traveled at least six kilometers into China and is continuing to make his way away from Russia, environmental official Viktor Serdyuk was quoted as saying Wednesday by the Vostok-Media news site.

Ustin was one of five orphaned tigers found in the Siberian taiga two years ago and reared back to health at a reserve in the Jewish Autonomous region in faraway Siberia.

Three of the five tigers were released back into the wild by President Vladimir Putin during a visit to the region in May. One of the tigers, named Kuzya, earlier made headlines around the world when it crossed the Amur River into China, reportedly in search of food.

According to Serdyuk, Kuzya is quite happy in his new homeland due to the abundance of food on offer there. Villagers recently reported finding a boar which was believed to have been killed by the young tiger, Vostok-Media reported.

Meanwhile another of "Putin's tigers" — a female named Ilyona— was intercepted near the Chinese border on Tuesday, news site Moskovsky Komsomolets reported, without specifying by whom.

The Amur tiger is a highly endangered species, with its total population estimated at about 400, most of them inhabiting the Russian Far East.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/amur-tiger-follows-putin-s-kuzya-across-border-into-china/511086.html
Edited by maker, Nov 15 2014, 02:42 PM.
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