Effects Of Natural Enemy Odors On Plateau Pikas’ Behavior

In the experimental conditions of indoor breeding, the effects of faeces odor of natural enemy, including cats, Tibetan mastiffs, yellow weasels and plateau zokors, on the behaviors of plateau pikas were investigated. The behaviors of plateau pikas observed are mainly hidden times, activity times, feeding behaviors, exploration frequency, etc. The results indicated that:1. The faeces odor of natural enemy had significant effects on feeding times of plateau pika. Compared with the controls, the faeces odor of yellow weasels, Tibetan mastiffs and cat had significant inhibiting effect on feeding times. The effect intensity ranked as follows:yellow weasels, cat, and Tibetan mastiffs. Moreover, the inhibiting effect enhanced with faces concentrations. There exist negative correlations between feeding times and faces odor of yellow weasels, cat, and Tibetan mastiffs, respectively. The faces odor of plateau zokors, however, had no significant inhibiting effect on feeding times. These results suggest that, as a sympatric species, plateau pikas are insensitivity to zokor’s odor.2. The faeces odor of different enemies had significant inhibiting effects on hiding times of plateau pika. Among which there is the longest hiding times in the treatment of yellow weasels, then followed by cats and Tibetan mastiffs. There exist negative correlations between hiding times and concentration of faeces odor of yellow weasels, cat, and Tibetan mastiffs, respectively, but no correlations between hiding time and zokor’s odors.3. The faeces odor of different enemies all had significant inhibiting effects on activity times of plateau pika. The intensity orders are yellow weasel and cat. As the increasing of odor concentration, the activity times decreased significantly. Whereas the faces odor of Tibetan mastiffs and zokor had no significant effects on activity times of plateau pikas.4. The modifying frequency, upright frequency decreased significantly in the condition of yellow weasel, cat and Tibetan mastiff faeces odor, and as the concentration of odor increased, the extent of decreasing became larger, the correlations between them was negative. The frequency of stretch out heads and exploring, however, increased significantly in the same condition. The extent of increasing became larger as the concentration of odor increased, and there exist a positive correlation between them. There also exist significant enhanced effects of plateau zokor’s odor on exploring frequency of plateau pika, but no effects on other behaviors, such as modifying frequency, upright frequency, and the frequency of stretch out heads.5. The faeces odors of different natural enemy had significant effects on feeding frequency of plateau pika. Compared with controls, the faeces odor of yellow weasel, cat and Tibetan mastiff all had significant inhibiting effects on feeding frequency of plateau pika, while the faeces odor of plateau zokor had no obvious effects on feeding frequency. As the concentration of odor increased, the extent of decreasing became larger, and there exist significant negative correlations between odor concentration and feeding frequency. But the variation of odor concentration of zokor had no effects on feeding frequency of plateau pika.