02.04 – Scent Marking

Episode description:

This land is my land, that land is your land. Or so says the freshy pile of stinky excrement on top of the rock in the middle of the trail. For the more reclusive misanthropes of the animal world, their waste does all the talking. Whether it’s for sex, territory, or just to check in, animals can turn their 1s and 2s into As, Bs, and Cs. Learn to read the signs in the scat on this the Single Acorn Podscat.

WORKS CITED

• Laboratory animal allergy (source). It looks like male rate pee may be more allergenic (source)
• Animal urine (e.g. bobcat, coyote, etc.) for sale on Amazon.com (link)
• Video of woodchuck smell test (video)
• Hyena butter (source)
• Protein-rich diets yield more potent urine (b/c of high [2-phenylethylamine]) Carnivores have concentrations up to 3,000x higher than in herbivores
• Flehmen response in a tiger (video)
• Expressing your dogs anal scent glands (video)
• Cheetah communication at scent-marking sites can be inhibited or delayed by predators (source)
• Ratites DO SCENT MARK!! – Use of olfaction in Northern Brown Kiwi, Apteryx mantelli (source)
• Primers and releasers in bees
• Sexual Maturation of Male and Female White-Footed Mice (Peromyscus leucopus noveboracensis): Influence of Physical or Urine Contact with Adults (source)
• Potential risks of olfactory signaling: the effect of predators on scent marking by beavers (source)
• Swedish TV clip about bäverhojt (video)
• Animal Guide: Spotted Hyena (link)
• Is there a trade-off between scent marking and hunting behaviour in a stalking predator, the Eurasian lynx, Lynx lynx? (sources)
• Evidence for Top Predator Control of a Grazing Ecosystem (how wolves and other predators have transformed Yellowstone’s ecology) (source, source)
• Effect of Scent-Marking in Delaying Territorial Invasion in the Blind Mole-Rat Spalax ehrenbergi (source)
• Wrong – not prepartum for deer
• Dominant Whitetail Buck Rub-Urinating – peeing on tarsal glands (video)
• Fishers control size of turds (link)
• Raccoon breeding patterns (link)
• Multiple Paternity in White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus Virginianus) Revealed by DNA Microsatellites (source)
• Urine Washing and Sniffing in Wild White-faced Capuchins (Cebus capucinus): Testing Functional Hypotheses (source)
• The morphology of the penis in porcupine (Hystrix cristata) – note this is not the North American porcupine (source)
• Wild dogs (source)
• Scent-marking by male mammals: Cheat-proof signals to competitors and mates (source)