Wildlife

[Bazile]

How does a leopard ( or another predator ) know where the 100 square miles of his territory starts and ends ?

[andy-hughes]

They scent-mark it with urine, and they rub their cheeks on rocks and trees which emits a unique scent.

Other leopards recognise the scents for what they are, boundary markers.

[naomi24]

They know where the fences are. ;o)

[barry1010]

When they reach the end of their tether

[Bazile]

So they go around the perimeter of the 100 sq miles scent marking it - really ?

How do they know where 10. 20 , 30 , 50 sq mile point is from point 'a ' in any direction to start with , in the first place ?

[pimplyteen]

I doubt they know that :0) Its we humans that think we know everything. I would think it's an average area that the leopard tends to travel and is seen on fixed cameras.

I do however wonder how they know that 100.000 cubic feet of water falls over Niagara falls per second.

[wolf63]

I would think that 100 square miles will be an average area. Have you seen a Leopard use a tape measure?

I would think that they take over an area big enough to allow them to find enough food and they try not to infringe on their neighbour's territory.

[Ken4155]

Because it's stipulated on the deeds.

[andy-hughes]

Bazile - The measurement is average, some may have less than that, some maybe more, but as advised, they don't measure it.

[naomi24]

No, they just roam until they bump into a bigger bloke - and then they scarper back again.

[Bazile]

//Have you seen a Leopard use a tape measure?//

Funny you should ask I ...

[Bazile]

Someone should tell Sir David Attenborough and other wildlife commentators to stop using phrases like
' the leopard has a territory of 100 sq miles ' and instead say ' an estimated ' instead

[naomi24]

In all seriousness, that is a vast area. Marvellous really.

[wolf63]

I went to see if I could find a youtube video that shows how animals work out their territory and how they share with others. But I found this mega cute one instead

[andy-hughes]

Bazile - People know that Sir David is being approximate, animals don't measure, so no-one expects the area to be accurate.

[pimplyteen]

It can well be narrowed down to what he states Bazile. You have to remember there's been a lot of preservation / conservation going for some number of years now, and with the GPS collar that they fix to a lot of wildlife they can track their movements for many months.
After so long of tracking the collar can be set to release at a given time without any further stress to the animal.

[douglas9401]

"...animals don't measure, so no-one expects the area to be accurate."

Inch Worm, Yard dog, that one who lives in Hectare's House...

[perseverer]

If you think of 100 sq miles as being 10 miles by 10 miles it maybe doesn't seem like such a big area for a leopard to control.

[Peter Pedant]

Marking territory is done when pets are wanting to“stake out a claim” to a particular object and to let others know about their claim. Some pets may go to the extreme of urinating to mark a particular area as their own.

but we always really knew this didnt we?

[Peter Pedant]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_(animal)

more than you ever need or want to know on this.

I have always wondered if the male had to do a round to freshen the marks - Kinda distance and time thing, and it is pretty obvious the distance is gonna be a circle. NOT the most efficient for packing males, a square / rectangle would be.

My dog found a chicken carcass under someone'w wall. and checked every day for 21 d to see if another had miraculously grown there. But this is food seeking rather than marking.

For those who have done and passed 11+ maff ; I suggest an obvious eqn (without tiresome derivation) for a time distance smell relation is :
.
∂2u/∂t2 = c2 ∂2u∂x2 and its solutions. ( 1 dimensional wave equation and er easily extended to two )

I should get out more

[jno]

humans do the same thing round the borders of the their territory to deter foxes. Perhaps it works better on the Serengeti.