In Naliboki Forest adult lynxes particularly males are known as killers of the vulnerable categories of wolves such as pups, lonely living subadults and heavily pregnant females (Sidorovich et al., 2019). Also, lynxes may be a valuable competitor for wolves in their exploiting of the roe deer and beaver populations. Study on the interference of wolves and lynxes in Naliboki Forest suggested that wolves disagree with presence of lynxes in the habitats, and they behave aggressively towards lynxes, too. Lynxes feel safe in forest habitats, whereas they mainly avoid openings, when wolves are common in the habitats and where they may be killed by a wolf pack, because there are no trees to escape.
One of the aggressive features of wolf behavior towards lynxes is erasing off lynx marking points by them. An outstanding example of this wolf behavior we (the authors and Wild Naliboki team) documented in Naliboki Forest during this winter (2018-2019) at one of the numerous forestry poles.
There different lynxes (at least 6 different individuals) marked numerically by urinating, scratching and rubbing as well as they investigated the marks. Afterwards wolf adult male was registered, while it was trying to extirpate the lynx marks on the forestry pole by gnawing them out.
That wolf behaviour was one of the three registered manners of erasing off lynx marks by wolves. The second one was an affluent marking of wolves by urine and also by scats at or even on the marking point of lynxes. In this case lynxes tend to abandon such a marking point. In Naliboki Forest we found at least five such situations, when a very important marking point of lynxes was abandoned by them finally. First, lynxes visited less and less to such spoiling marking points and then left them at all. The third way of wolf erasing off lynx marking was digging by wolves of the wood cover spot, where lynx sprinkle urine. This way of wolf protest against marking by lynxes is quite common in Naliboki Forest.
Thus, wolves, having lynxes in the habitats, feel aggression to the species presence, and one of the numerous forms of the wolf-lynx interference is wolf erasing off marking points of lynxes.
Zoology by Vadim Sidorovich 