The Chemical Code

The Chemical Code

Bodily secreted chemicals plays a key role in communication, social organisation and territory partitioning of tigers. Scent marking is one of the four types of communication in tigers that communicate the strength of an aggressive felid (Waser and Wiley, 1980), territorial establishment and the oestrus cycle (of a female). In general, there are five ways in which tigers do scent marking.

1. Urine spraying - the most common method of scent marking in which tigers spray urine onto vegetation, leaving pieces of communication to be picked up by other tigers.

2. Clawing - Tigers claw the trunks of the trees, sometimes by even climbing to prove how intimidatingly tall they are, to another wandering tiger. In addition to the visual message, chemicals such as pheromones are also deposited on the barks.

3. Scraping - Tigers scrape on a variety of substrates, just before excreting. Anal gland secretions still remain one of the poorly understood subject of the cat world.

4. Vegetation flattening - This is done by tigers rolling over the vegetation. For ex. a female may indicate her interest by rolling in the same place that was flattened by a male.

5. Cheek rubbing - There are no cheek glands in cats, and hence Cheek rubbing is generally associated with urine marked sites and may be used for association or cooperative purposes.