Cheetahs and many other mammalian species are known to mark trees with urine, scats or simply their scent. Marking of trees by cheetahs also helps other species, a new study published in the journal Mammalian Biology has shown. This helps them establish communication networks by exchanging information about each other, or at least gathering this information.
The new study has shown that several other mammalian species maintain a communication network on “cheetah trees”, gathering information about members of their own species as well as others. These included black-backed jackals, African wildcats and warthogs
While the new findings come at a time when India has started to reintroduce cheetahs into the wild, the study was conducted in Namibia by Cheetah Research Project of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), Germany.
The study, conducted on farmland in Namibia, was based on photos and videos recorded by wildlife camera traps. Jackals, wildcats and warthogs visited and sniffed the cheetahs trees more frequently than control trees, the captures showed. On the other hand, a common prey species of cheetahs avoided these hotspots, Leibniz-IZW said in a press release.
The scientists observed nine “cheetah marking trees” and nine others that looked similar. Since some species visited and sniffed cheetah marking trees more frequently than control trees, the scientists inferred that they gain important information from cheetah markings.
Some other species exchanged information equally frequently at “cheetah trees” and control trees. This implied that they used all these trees for their own communication.
The survey was conducted over 65 days, during which 29 mammalian species visited both sets of trees. The species visiting cheetah trees were more diverse than those visiting control trees, but the scientists observed most species visited the trees only a few times. From the 29 species, the scientists selected only those visited the trees at least 20 times. This narrowed the analysis to 13 species that visited, 9 species that sniffed, and 1 species that left information at the cheetah marking and control trees.
Cheetahs rarely prey on African wild cats, black-backed jackals warthogs. These were the ones that visited and sniffed cheetah marking trees more frequently than control trees. The scientists suggested that small carnivore species might visit cheetah marking trees to assess when cheetahs last visited the area and/or to feed on undigested prey remains in cheetah scats.
On the other hand, common duikers, a species that cheetahs regularly prey on, visited cheetah marking trees less frequently than control trees, the photos and videos showed.