Propiedad, Planta y Equipo Equipo de Oficina

Most species of wild cats are solitary. However, in captivity, these cats are often held in groups and most of them adapt to it reasonable well. Because habitat loss is considered to be a reason for the population decline of wild cats, especially the big cats, such as tigers ( Burton, 1 987), keeping wild cats at higher population densities would be useful for wildlife conservation. Thus, we need to understand the social behaviour of wild cats at high population densities in order to pursue one avenue of conservation management. It is impossible, however, to study the social behaviour of wild cats easily in the wild. Thus, it would be good study them in captivity and to use domestic cats as a model to study cat social behaviour in general. Domestic cats are usually accepted as living solitary animals. However, colonies of free living domestic cats are often observed, when the food supply is plenty (Bradshaw, 1 992; Case, 2003). Domestic cats retain some of the wild behaviours of their ancestor, the African wild cat (Case, 2003). Moreover, observations from my study show that domestic cats in laboratory cages and tigers in free-ranging parks share many social behaviour patterns, such as allogrooming, allorubbing, resting together, eating together, threatening, fighting, and displacing. Therefore, the domestic cat is a good model to develop techniques to study the behaviour of t igers.

I observed tiger behaviour at three different captive facilities in China (the Beij ing Zoo, the Beij ing Wildlife Park, and the Haerbin Siberia Tiger Park) and domestic cats at the Heinz Wattie Feline Unit at M assey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

M y study showed that domestic cats are significantly more aggressive to strange cats than to familiar group members. This suggests that when t igers are formed into groups, it is better to let the tigers have visual contact and limited tactile contact before moving them together, because the process of familiarisation could reduce aggression level ( Burks et al., 2004).

I found that as the age differences between domestic cats increased, the rate of agonistic behaviour decreased s ignificantly. Age may be related to the hierarchy of the animal group ( Knowles et al., 2004; Jennings et al., 2006), i.e., animals of a similar age may be more aggressive to each other in order to compete for a higher rank in the group. Weight may also relate to the hierarchy of the animal group. Animals of similar weight may compete for a higher rank just as animals of similar age do ( Vandenbos and Buning, 1 994). My study shows that domestic cats had significantly more affiliative interact ions as the weight difference between members of the dyads increased. Therefore, it would be helpful to form tiger groups comprising animals of different ages (young adults, adults, and old adults) to reduce the rates of aggression. Moreover, different age tigers may have different body weight, and this may further reduce aggression in the formed groups.

Neutered male and intact female domestic cats do not show behavioural differences in my study, which is similar to the results from other studies

(Crowell-Davis et a!, 2004; Wolfe, 200 _{I ).} However, intact females were more

aggressive in oestrus, which suggests that when female tigers are in oestrus, it would be better to keep them apart.

Kinship plays a significant role in an animal's social and reproductive interaction ( Lacey and Wieczorek, 2004). Domestic cats in my study, however, showed no significant differences in their rates of affiliative or agonistic interactions between different relatedness levels (coefficient of relatedness: 0, 0.25, 0.5). This may be a result of the breeding management of the Feline Unit and the fam iliarity between every individual. Despite the insignificant result, domestic cats related at the 0.5-level had a lower rate of agonistic interaction than cats less related to one another. This indicates that close relatives may be less aggressive toward each other ( Kapsalis and Berman, 1 996a; Kapsalis and Berman, 1 996b ). This suggests that when keep tigers in groups, it might be good to keep siblings or relatives together before they are mature. However, to avoid inbreeding, relatives should be separated during breeding season.

My observations from the three captive t iger facilit ies suggest that b ig cats in captivities need comparatively more space than just small cages. Also, they need more

natural e lements in their playground enrichment. Those kept m small cages

particularly need enrichment such as branches and toys.

My study indicates that observation time would be better at early evening and early morning because at these t imes, cats are more active. The following affiliative and agonistic behaviours are recommended for use in social behaviour observation: allogrooming, allorubbing, resting together, eating together, fighting, displacing, chasing, and threatening. Observation is better to be done without other people around because cats may change their behaviour when people are around. Identification of individual animals is necessary when observing social behaviour; therefore, pilot observations are necessary to learn how to identify every individual.

Further study needs to be done to understand kinship and sex influences on domestic cats' social behaviour. These were different to investigate in my study because there are some biases, such as the neutered males, the related ancestors, and the famil iarity of all the cats. Also, because there are some l imits in my observation of tigers, such as limited t ime, too many visitors, lack of data, and special observation season, more observation of tigers in free-ranging parks needs to be carried out, especially without visitors and staff around, to help release t igers back to the wild.

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