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School project about animal behavior
Topic Started: Nov 7 2014, 09:25 AM (1,136 Views)
fridooh
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I'm doing a school project in my biology class. The project can be about almost anything, as long as it has something to do with animals and nature. I've come up with some ideas and I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.

Felines in captivity
Basically a kind of survey where I compare felines behavior in the wild and in captivity. I'll choose four different cat species and I'll visit a zoo that houses them to study their behavior. Unfortunately, I won't be able to study wild felines other that watching documentaries and reading about them. I'll look up the age difference, if their mating behavior is different etc.

Inbreeding white tigers and lions
White tigers and lions (also "golden" tigers, I think) are popular zoo attractions and some zoos try too keep the white gene through inbreeding. I don't know this for a fact, so I will look it up and see if there are a lot of inbred white tigers/lions and see if they have any defects caused by it. The main thing I can look up is my local zoo that had an inbred white tiger who was.. Well, extremely stupid. He couldn't reproduce so they put him down. I want to look who his parents are, and what zoo he came from and if his problems was in fact from inbreeding.

Human-eating felines
I've read a lot about lions and leopards hunting and eating humans in Africa. I don't know much about this subject but I'd like to find out where this happens and why it happens - why the felines decided to give up their natural prey and instead hunt humans. What happens to the felines after this? Does behavior change? What will the people do to prevent this from happening again?

And, something that's not about felines
Should dolphins and orcas be allowed as captive animals?
I guess many of us have seen "The Cove" and "Blackfish" - recently a group of animal right extremists (like the Swedish version of PETA) decided to start a campaign to forbid captive dolphins in Sweden. Only one zoo in Sweden have dolphins, the zoo that's largest in Scandinavia, Kolmården. They wrote an open letter back to the group and the conflict began, it's kind of interesting to read. Even though Kolmården states that all dolphins are doing well in captivity, it's a fact that over 60 dolphins has died there since 1950. It would be interesting to dig deep and find out what the dolphin and orca industry is really all about.



So, does any of this sound interesting? I'm sure a lot of you know more about these subjects than I do. If you have any information or personal experience about this, please tell me. I'll need all the info I can get :)
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Orca Freak
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Killer Whales rule the World

The first one has probably been done a lot, but it's possibly also the easiest of your subjects to work on. The 2 others about cats sounds really interesting.
The dolphin one is probably the one you need to be careful with. It's a very delicate and controversial subject. So if you go for that one, I suggest you really think about on which side you're on; how you stand towards it; and how you're going to defend that idea without starting another "all dolphins have to be released" - war.
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Meerkatmatt2
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Point being, orcas, beaked whales, pilot whales, open sea dolphins, baleen whales and sperm and dwarf sperm whales should not be kept in captivity, they would dislike it a lot.
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Burns
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King of Lemurs

I'd say to open the search area a little with the third topic and do "Man eating animals." Then you could use the same contentions just on a larger scale.
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Jules
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Mihi est imperare orbi universo

fridooh
Nov 7 2014, 09:25 AM
Inbreeding white tigers and lions
White tigers and lions (also "golden" tigers, I think) are popular zoo attractions and some zoos try too keep the white gene through inbreeding. I don't know this for a fact, so I will look it up and see if there are a lot of inbred white tigers/lions and see if they have any defects caused by it. The main thing I can look up is my local zoo that had an inbred white tiger who was.. Well, extremely stupid. He couldn't reproduce so they put him down. I want to look who his parents are, and what zoo he came from and if his problems was in fact from inbreeding.
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/kenny-white-tiger-reveals-price-inbreeding

This should help. I think there was a topic at Gaia about it too with plenty of information ;)
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fridooh
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Thanks a lot! :)
I'm right now kind of choosing between the inbreeding or the man eating lions.
When it comes to the orca/dolphin subject, it seems to be the most interesting subject somehow. But I don't want to take sides. It's hard cause I've seen the dolphins at Kolmården and they all seem to be happy animals.. But at the same time, facts kind of tell another story. But it seems the subject is just too delicate to discuss so I'm dropping it :)
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Mysty
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a loose cannon

If you decide to write about man-eating predators, David Quammen's book Monster of God delves into that topic quite a bit. It's an interesting read and might be useful to you.
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Furka
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Or you could try to get Jim Corbett's book about the man eating leopard of Rudraprayag (or whatever you say that). That also explains very well how the behaviour of a man eater changes drastically compared to a "normal" animal.

Regarding the lions in Africa, I know that attacks have increased a lot in Tanzania, especially in the Selous Game reserve area, apparently for the following reason;
during the rainy season, lions have a hard time hunting, because herbivores are scattered in the environment instead of gathered around the few watering holes like in the dry season. So lions began moving towards the villages, knowing that they could find prey there in the form of bushpigs and warthogs that raid the crops.
Unfortunately, contacts with humans became more frequent, peope started to get killed, and eventually the lions became used to hunt them, and now they go after people like theyd do with any other animal, to the point of breaking into houses to take people while they sleep.
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

just a heads up, take documentaries like Blackfish and (even more so) The Cove with a grain of salt
both are heavily biased and don't give an accurate view of the entire picture
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fridooh
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They are really interesting documentaries but I'm aware that they are very one-sided :)
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Zoohuahua
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About man-eating felines you could talk about the man-eating tigers of Sundarbans (India and Blangadesh). The factors that lead to it etc.
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fridooh
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I really wanted to do a project about the man-eating felines, but after searching for information, I decided to go with the felines in captivity vs wild. It's just the easiest subject and the only subject that I can come with my own opinions after studying the animals my self (that's an important part of this project, apparently).

I decided to look closer at clouded leopards, Asiatic lions, sand cats and jaguars.
I'm going to take up the age difference, breeding behaviors, exercise, predator instincts, stress symptoms etc.

Something I'm writing about atm
From http://www.cloudedleopard.org/about_main
 
In captivity, clouded leopards present a reproductive challenge. Unfortunately, there is a high incidence of aggression between males and females, sometimes resulting in the death of the female. This has made clouded leopards one of the most difficult cats to breed in captivity. Present captive management practices include introducing the members of a pair prior to one year of age. This practice has resulted in the establishment of more successful pair-bonds and lessening of aggression.

What do you think about this behavior? Does it have something to do with the animal being in captivity or is it like this is the wild, too? Afaik they don't know much about clouded leopards breeding in the wild.
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Furka
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Well I'm not an expert but it's possible that they are very solitary, to the point of being extremely territorial, and the presence of more individuals in the same environment can cause a lot of stress.
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Posted Image Drax
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Regular Leopards are extremely territorial in the wild, I would venture that Clouded Leopards are no different (Even though they aren't all that closely related to regular Leopards.) Little to nothing is currently known about their social habits in the wild, and everything that is known about their breeding habits comes from captivity. This is just a suggestion, but you might want to find another cat to substitute this one if you're trying to compare lifestyles of captivity vs wild, since almost nothing is known about it in the wild. Tigers and Lions are probably overdone, but perhaps you would consider the Pallas's cat? I find it an interesting species that many people may still be unaware of, and there is more information available regarding it's behaviors. While the information about how they interact in the wild may be a little bit on the short side, there's seems to be plenty known about how they cope in captivity since there are so many breeding programs. Maybe you could make something out of that?
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fridooh
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It's a great idea, I was thinking the same thing, but I wanted to choose species well known - the Asiatic lion and jaguar - and species that's less known - the sandcat - and a specie that's very unknown - the clouded leopard. It makes my project more interesting, if that makes sense :)

I've started the introduction and I wanted to share it here, just in case if anyone has a view or if something seems incorrect. And ignore the grammar - this is translated with google translate xD

Introduction
 
Felines in captivity in Sweden
Zoos are becoming more common around the world, and Sweden is no exception. In Sweden today there are 20 different zoos and aquariums that have both exotic and Nordic animals. In 9 of these zoos are animals of the family Felidae - Cats. How does their way of life compare with the wild species? How do they differ in behavior, age, breeding?
In Sweden there are more than 80 individuals from the family Felidae scattered across the country's various zoos. The most common species include lynx, African lions and Siberian tiger (also known as the Amur tiger). The zoo with the largest number of species of the family, however, house none of the three popular species. It has focused on the more unknown species as Asiatic lions, fishingcats and clouded leopards. This zoo is called Park Zoo and can be found in the small town Eskilstuna. Parken Zoo has 9 different species of felines, which is a greater variation than any other zoo in Sweden, and is also alone with showcasing Asian lions, sandcats, Sumatran tigers, jaguars and fishing cats.

Parken Zoo, a hard-reviewed zoo
Parken Zoo is a very special zoo for me and I visit it several times a year. It is a relatively small zoo and has undergone severe criticism for its handling of animals in the past year, but I see a clear improvement for each time I visit. Just over a year ago the zoo manager, Helena Olsson, resigned after the harsh criticism from media. Lennart Sunden, who is also chief operating officer for Kolmarden, took her place and work to improve the park's animal husbandry began. Parken Zoo was named the most audited the zoo in 2013. In just one year, I saw confused and non-active animals turn fit and healthy with more opportunities for activities and more suitable enclosures. The healthy and happy animals show their satisfaction by breeding like never before - only in 2014 has Parken Zoo welcomed dwarf hippo Olivia, amurleopard cub Olga and five clouded leopard cubs from two different litters (Li, Tezz, and three still unnamed - all females) . All these species are incredibly difficult to reproduce in captivity and these births became a worldwide sensation as well as extremely important publication for the severely criticized zoo.

Four species and four individuals
Of all the different species, I have chosen to work with clouded leopards, jaguars, sand cats and Asiatic lions. These are four very different species from different parts of the world.
Clouded leopard is the species that we know the least about in the wild because they are incredibly shy. Almost everything we know about them is from captivity. Parken Zoo has 8 induviduals, and I have chosen to focus specifically on their single male Tezpur.
The jaguar is the largest feline shortly after the tiger and the hybrid liger. Parken Zoo has three adults, two females and one male of which the females are original spotted, but the male is melanism, which means he is all black. I have chosen to focus on the male, called Avatar.
Parken Zoo's smallest feline, sand cats, is a desert living cat from Africa. Parken Zoo has an adult breeding pair and their now grown cubs. I have chosen to focus on the oldest female, Ramella.
Finally, we have the Asiatic lions, a species that is extremely close to extinction in the wild and can only be found in the wild in Gir Forest National Park. The zoo had a large group a few years ago, but deaths have reduced the group to only four females, two sisters and and one of their litters of two sisters. The adult male Kaya and his one-year-old son passed away due to illness this year. I have chosen to focus on Kaya, although he is deceased.
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