IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Sharma, S.; Dutta, T.; Bhatnagar, Y.V. | |
| Marking site selection by free ranging snow leopard (_Uncia uncia_) | |
| 2006 Book Chapter | |
Marking plays a major role in social communication of solitary carnivores. For the snow leopard (_Uncia uncia_), a sparsely distributed, solitary top predator of the high altitudes mountains in Asia, communication is very important for maintaining the social structure. Snow leopards leave a variety of signs in their habitat, with scrape marking and scent marking the two most predominant types of sign. We investigated the marking site selection by free ranging snow leopards in Hemis High Altitude National Park, Ladakh, India. We walked 15 trails and encountered 107 scrape sites and 43 rock scent sites and recorded their habitat attributes. We also sampled 99 random sites and 65 randomly selected rocks for quantifying the habitat availability. Logistic regression identified the height of the overhang of rock face, slope of the overhang of rock face and slope of the terrain to classify sprayed and unsprayed rocks with 91.6% classification accuracy. The stepwise discriminate function analysis resulted in 78.3% accuracy in classifying scrape sites and random sites, based on substrate, landform ruggedness, dominant topographic feature, rangeland use and openness of the terrain. For scent marking snow leopards preferred rocks of a particular size (100 cm modal width and 100-150 cm modal height) with a prominent overhang (70-85 cm modal height) and a slope of 40ΓΈ (modal value) for the marked rock face; and for scrape marking, a substrate with soil and shale. Snow leopards seemed to prefer gentle to moderate slopes for leaving scrape marks, while scent marks were mostly left on steeper slopes. 'Highly broken terrain' was selectively used for both scraping and scent marking. Rolling terrain was preferred for scrape marking, while cliffs were preferred for scent marking. In the use of the dominant topographic features for leaving scrapes, snow leopards selectively used the 'river terrace', 'riverside buff' and 'valley bottom', while for scent marking they preferred 'hill slopes' and 'valley bottoms'. Snow leopards appeared to clearly avoid the areas under greater levels of land use disturbance. Our study results could be used for more effective sign-survey designs, for population monitoring of snow leopards. It also gives an insight about marking pattern and mark placement strategy adapted by snow leopards for the efficient and effective dissemination of olfactory information, which is often useful for their communication. This study could also help in developing enrichment facilities for captive snow leopards. |
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