- Behavior Of Captive Wolves

Wolf (Canis lupus} is one sort of Carnivore, Canidae, Canis. The main distributions of wolves, whose ecological adaptive abilities are extremely strong, are North-east, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet where the population density is comparatively less. Few analyses on wolf (Canis lupus) are made at present, especially on the aspect of reproduction. The lack of the reproduction research of wolves does great harm to the protection of wolves. It has the important significance both theoretic and practical to make the entire systematic analyses on the wolf reproduction.Nursing behavior plays an important role in the period of reproduction. The increase of pups' survival rate and stable-breeding population number greatly depend on the nursing behavior. Maternal behavior makes great contribution to the survival and growth of the pups.Cameras are firstly installed in this research. Observations of one couple wolves are made by the method of Focal-animal Sampling (Collecting the behavior data of the wolves by 24-hours hard disk copy) in Harbin North -Forest Zoo. The great man-made influence on the activity rhythm during the breeding season, the maternal behavior of female wolf which is gradually weakened as the time goes by, the entire production process, the number and the sex ratio of newly-born pups, the behavioral development of pups are all in focuses. This thesis makes an explanation of infanticide by means of the predation hypothesis, the resource competition hypothesis, the adoption avoidance hypothesis, the sexual selection hypothesis and nonadaptive explanations. The reproduction strategies which avoid infanticide are pregnancy termination, maternal aggression, group defence, avoidance of infanticidal individuals, promiscuity and territoriality. This paper probes into the possible reasons of infanticide, basing on the above theories.