| Title: | Pheromones of Tiger and Other Big Cats |
| Author(s): | Poddar-Sarkar M; Brahmachary RL; |
| Address: | "Department of Molecular Medicine University of Padova Padova, Italy" |
| Journal Title: | Neurobiology of Chemical Communication |
| Abstract: | "This chapter is based on a long-standing quest initiated by one of us (RLB) in 1964 when George Schaller undertook the first detailed scientific study of the tiger (Schaller 1967). It has been rather like chasing a crooked shadow through a maze, for the concept of pheromones in mammals was not well understood at that time and many misconceptions on the social life of the tiger, and particularly regarding the question of olfactory ability of the tiger, obscured the views of latter-day researchers. We have attempted to take into account implications of evolution, ethology, ethochemistry, and ethogenomics while studying the strategies for documenting the different forms of chemical communication in the world of big cats, especially the tiger. Our knowledge in this context was enriched by experiences during several periods of fieldwork in different ecological terrain, in India and Africa, in most of the cases by one of us (RLB). The subject of chemical signaling, only one aspect of which is pheromone, is very wide-ranging. For the sake of clarity and the self-sufficiency of this chapter, we project our views in two ways: in the first part we present a general treatment of chemical signals concentrating mainly on pheromonal signals (communication) in the tiger and other big cats, the lion (Asiatic and African), the Indian leopard, and the African cheetah, and in the second part we will try to substantiate our views with quantitative data records that we have gathered over decades in different phases. Our study on the latter three big cats is less exhaustive than that on the tiger and we have had no opportunity of investigating the jaguar and the cougar (puma). A major breakthrough in the subject of animal psychology occurred when in 1973, Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine for their pioneering work on animal behavior. A new terminology-ethology-came of age; the terms 'ethology' and 'animal behavior' became synonymous and now also include sociobiology and related analysis and modeling on behavioral studies from the evolutionary perspective, comparative psychology, and very recently, signal engineering and ethochemistry (as developed in the context of our work on big cats), and so forth" |
| Notes: | "engMucignat-Caretta, Carla Poddar-Sarkar, Mousumi Brahmachary, Ratan Lal Review Book Chapter" |
