Reproductive Behavior Of Captive Wolves (canis Lupus) And Hormone Relations

Reproductive activities play an important role in mammalian life, and it is expressed by sexual behavior. Therefore, the research on the animals' reproductive activities has become a lasting and hot topic.With the method of target sampling, this paper will mainly study captive wolves to observe and record their activities while the whole-event sampling when they mating. For the study of hormones, noninvasive sampling technique will be used to collect the wolves' fecal samples, extracting the gonadal hormones, and measurement of these hormones in fecal extracts by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), in order to get a general understanding of the reproductive behavior pattern under artificial conditions and the changing law of the gonadal hormones in different phases of the reproductive season. This study will provide a theoretical foundation for the reproductive activities, the scientific management, the protection and the population recovery of the wolf, as well as the protection of other animals.The main results are as follows:1. In the estrus period, the behaviors, such as, howling, sniffing, mark covering and grooming of male wolves differ obviously. The frequency of these behaviors is higher than in the proestrus period. After mating, the rest time of the male wolves is longer than in the proestrus period. Although the frequency of disturbing neighbors is lower, more looking around neighbors.2. There are some obvious changes of the female wolves' behaviors in the proestrus period, the estrus period and the pregnancy period, such as activity, howling, sniffing, mark covering, grooming, disturbing neighbors. In estrus period, the frequency of these behaviors is higher than in the non-estrus period, while the frequency of steady standing is lower than in the non-estrus period. After mating, for the female wolves, the pregnancy period began. Compared with in the period of mating, the time for returning to shed is more, while for activity less.3. In the process of mating, because of the individual reasons, there are some individual differences in the activity of the male wolves. The differences between the thrusting time is not so remarkable (P>0.05), but more notable in the locking time (P<0.01). In the observation of mating behavior, 46 times mating process had been recorded, with the date distributed 8:00-16:00, in which there are two peaks in 8:00-14:00 and 14:00-16:00. This, in some degree, has a close relationship with the raising condition and man-made control.4. Estradiol of female wolves shows the lower level in proestrus with a sharp rise in the estrus period. Four female wolves achieve peak value in the estrus period. The change of progesterone has a similar tendency with estradiol, after mating, the progesterone concentration increase rapidly and keep the certain level. It is inferred that the large number of progesterone is secreted from corpus luteum after ovulation.5. Testosterone is a sort of reproductive hormones which is concerned with sexual behavior directly of male wolves. The changes of testosterone relate to the seasons. It keep a high level in the estrus period. There are some remarkable differences of reproductive behaviors of the male wolves in each period, which is unanimous with the change of testosterone level. All of these results show that the change of testosterone level has a close relationship with the reproductive behaviors of the male wolves.