3 weeks ago
Scientists Develop Scent-Based Tool To Monitor India's Big Cats
Tigers and leopards are big cats that live in forests and are very hard to spot.
When they move around, they leave behind smells like urine and poop.
These smells carry secret messages about the animal that left them.
Scientists in India learned how to read these messages using special machines.
The machines can tell whether a smell came from a tiger or a leopard.
They can also tell if it came from a male or female, or a young or old animal.
They even found a special smell that shows up when a mother tiger is having babies.
This means scientists can learn about big cats without chasing or capturing them.
It is like reading a letter the animal left behind in the forest.
This helps people protect tigers and leopards better.
NCBS researchers developed a scent-based technique to identify tigers and leopards from chemicals in their urine and scat.
The method reveals an animal's species, age, sex, and reproductive status without capturing it.
The findings were published in the Journal of Chemical Ecology with support from a National Geographic Society grant.
Researcher BV Aditi Prasad collected samples from zoos in Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, and Vadodara and from wild tigers at Ranthambore Tiger Reserve.
The compound 2-nonanol was found at significantly higher levels in pregnant and lactating wild tigresses, a possible marker of breeding success.
- Who
- Researchers at India's National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), led by chemical ecologist BV Aditi Prasad, with senior author Prof Uma Ramakrishnan and supervising author Shannon Olsson.
- What
- Developed a non-invasive scent-analysis method that decodes chemicals in tiger and leopard urine and scat to reveal species, age, sex, and reproductive status.
- Where
- India — samples were collected from zoos in Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, and Vadodara and from wild tigers at Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan.
- When
- The study was recently published in the Journal of Chemical Ecology; no exact date is given in the article.
- Why
- To give wildlife managers a simple, practical, non-invasive way to monitor elusive and endangered big cats and gather demographic and physiological details that current methods provide less easily.
Key facts
- Research Institution
- National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research under the Department of Atomic Energy
- Lead Researcher
- BV Aditi Prasad
- Senior Author
- Prof Uma Ramakrishnan
- Publication
- Journal of Chemical Ecology
- Funding
- Grant from the National Geographic Society
- Key Chemical Marker
- 2-nonanol, elevated in pregnant and lactating wild tigresses
- Analytical Technique
- Thermal desorption gas chromatography mass spectrometry
- India's Tiger Population (2022)
- 3,167 per official national tiger assessment
Quotes
BV Aditi Prasad
Young researcher at NCBS who collected tiger and leopard samples
“Current monitoring methods can estimate how many big cats are out there, but they fall short on demographic and physiological details such as age, sex and reproductive status.”
NDTV
Prof Uma Ramakrishnan
Senior wildlife geneticist and co‑author of the NCBS study
“We are lucky to share our planet with many amazing animals. Yet we know so little about them.”
NDTV
Sources
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