Bánszegi Oxána, Jacinto Elisa, Urrutia Andrea, Szenczi Péter, Hudson Robyn
Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, AP 70228, CP 04510, Ciudad de México, Mexico.
Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Av. Universidad 3000, CP 04510, Ciudad de México, Mexico.
Anim Cogn. 2017 Jul;20(4):795-804. doi: 10.1007/s10071-017-1100-z. Epub 2017 May 24.
Mammalian maternal care usually comes at a large energetic cost. To maximize their fitness, mothers should preferentially care for their own offspring. However, the majority of studies of mother-offspring recognition have focused on herd- or colony-living species and there is little information on maternal discrimination in more solitary-living species. Olfaction has been found to play a major role in mother-offspring recognition across various taxa. Therefore, our aim was to study this in a species evolved from a solitary-living ancestor, the domestic cat. We asked whether cat mothers distinguish between their own and alien offspring when providing maternal care, and whether cat mothers use olfactory cues in the offspring discrimination process. Results of Experiment 1 showed that cat mothers do not discriminate between own and alien young when retrieving them to the nest. They treated own and alien young similarly with respect to latency and order of retrieval. However, the results of Experiments 2 and 3, where we used an olfactory habituation-discrimination technique, showed that mothers were able to distinguish between the odours of their own and alien kittens. We discuss what ecological and/or behavioural factors might influence a mother's decision when faced with discriminating between own and alien young, and why mothers might not discriminate between them when they are able to do so. Our findings support the view that maternal care alone should not be used as a measure of offspring recognition, and equal maternal care of own and alien young should not be immediately interpreted as an inability to discriminate between them.
哺乳动物的母性关怀通常会带来巨大的能量消耗。为了使自身的适应性最大化，母亲们应该优先照顾自己的后代。然而，大多数关于母婴识别的研究都集中在群居或群体生活的物种上，对于独居性更强的物种的母性辨别情况了解甚少。人们发现嗅觉在各类生物的母婴识别中起着主要作用。因此，我们的目标是在一种从独居祖先演化而来的物种——家猫身上研究这一现象。我们探究了猫妈妈在提供母性关怀时是否能区分自己的后代和外来的幼崽，以及猫妈妈在幼崽辨别过程中是否会利用嗅觉线索。实验1的结果表明，猫妈妈在把幼崽叼回巢穴时并不会区分自己的幼崽和外来的幼崽。它们在叼回幼崽的潜伏期和顺序方面，对自己的幼崽和外来的幼崽一视同仁。然而，在实验2和实验3中，我们运用了嗅觉习惯化-辨别技术，结果表明母猫能够区分自己幼崽和外来幼崽的气味。我们讨论了哪些生态和/或行为因素可能会影响母亲在面对区分自己的幼崽和外来幼崽时的决定，以及为什么母亲在有能力区分时却不这样做。我们的研究结果支持这样一种观点，即不能仅将母性关怀作为后代识别的衡量标准，对自己的幼崽和外来幼崽给予同等的母性关怀也不应立即被解读为无法区分它们。
