Co-author Irina Rotenko
Concerning territorial marking by lynxes there is intriguing question of a great interest of wolves, red foxes and deer to lynx marking points, but there is no such a reaction of lynxes and deer to marking by wolves. It is easy to realize, why red deer, roe deer and red foxes pay so much attention – lynxes kill them often. Therefore, any information about lynx distribution and status (adult or young, sex, welfare etc.) are important for these victim species. The same is for wolves. Adult lynxes not infrequently kill wolves from vulnerable categories such as pups, heavily pregnant females, just small individuals. However why there is no such a pronounced reaction on marking by wolves?
Actually, by tracing wolf marking points with camera traps and checking footprints on wolf marking plots, lynxes were registered surprisingly rarely. While comparing marking points of wolves and lynxes, in the cold season (November-March) wolves visited lynx marking points 34 times more often than lynxes inspected wolf marking spots. In the warm season this difference was even more pronounced and comprised 59 times.
It is really hard to find an acceptable explanation to the difference, particularly taking into account that deer do not pay much attention to wolf marking spots despite wolves kill deer with similar or even higher rate than lynxes. Concerning red foxes, they visited wolf marking spots frequently, similarly as lynx ones. But on wolf marking spots red foxes frequently roll to get smell of wolf urine, while they only investigate lynx marking by carefully smelling that.
Because of it is hard to get a relevant hypothesis on the above described difference in reaction on marking between lynxes, wolves and deer in the aspect of killer – victim relationships, we got a rough idea that the phenomenon may be related to the specificity of the lynx activity pattern, more properly to the prevailed mode of lynx hunting from long-sitting ambuscades and periodicity of their territorial marking. The recent our findings suggested that ambush hunting i.e. hunt-watching from ambuscade is the prevailed mode of lynx hunting. Respectively, ambush hunting at particular point and consuming of prey nearby successful ambuscade determines a spotted spatial distribution of lynxes. However, staying of lynxes in a particular place is alternated by few walking-marking days the territory-wide. Interestingly, that such marking activity appeared a lot population-conformal.
Indeed, while we were inspecting forest roads in Naliboki Forest or Paazierre Forest to register, where lynxes were present , it became so evident that lynxes almost simultaneously displayed distinctive activity during a rather short period. While inspecting forest roads for this purpose, quite often we found only few lynx trails during 6-14 days in a row, and then suddenly lynx trails (mostly of adult males) appear numerously on forest roads. This switch from staying in a house area to walking-marking happens in one of two weather situations: one or two days after a relatively heavy snowfall; or when the air humidity got markedly higher. The first situation forces lynxes to renew their scent marks, because many scent marks are covered under fresh snow. The second situation bases that in the conditions of a high air humidity scent marking and smelling as well as interpreting scent of other individuals is seemingly more effective. During such days, particularly adult males undertake long walks to place scent marks. During such walking-marking days, adult males walk approximately 15-40 km and place from 5 to 20 (usually 7 to 15) territorial marks per km of walking. In winter, the intensity of scent marking during such walks is more or less the same, showing only a double increase just before mating in the second half of February.
For instance, during four winters (2014-2018) in Naliboki Forest we traced the activity of one adult male lynx (we call him Kazimir). Kazimir’s home range was about 135 km² and he renewed his scent marks in the whole home range during two or three days. On this marking walk Kazimir quite rarely tried to hunt. While making, Kazimir covered a distance of about 40-70 km (usually it walked a standard itinerary of about 54 km) and placed on average 12.4 scent marks per km. During the mentioned four winters we succeeded to register the following duration of brakes between the two consequent marking walks: 8; 17, 11, 6, 12, 10, 9, 10, 12, 7, 15, 4, 8, 9, 12, 9, 6, 14, 8, 4, 8, 3, 9, 13, 6, 12, 5, 7, 10, 6, 2, 5; on average 8.7 days.
So, basing on the above results, the hypothesis on the difference in the reaction of the mentioned species (lynx, wolf, roe deer, red deer, red fox) on lynx or wolf marking is following. Wolf marking points are renewed not conformally on a population level, and that happens the countrywide every day (of course, each day not all marks are renewed by wolves). One day particular wolf pack marks in several places, other days they mark in other places. The wolf-related species habituated that there are more or less fresh markings of wolves continuously and the countrywide. As to lynxes, most of the time there are non-fresh markings and some fresh one sporadically distributed. But one day it appears many fresh lynx markings countrywide and that act stressful for the lynx-related species that in turn pay much attention to marking points of lynxes.
On the many photos that are below-presented you will see many illustration to the described phenomenon. However, the first batch of photos will only illustrate marking by lynxes by means of urinating and defecating, scratching and rubbing.
Zoology by Vadim Sidorovich 