| Budget Amount *help |
¥4,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥4,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1988: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1987: ¥3,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
this study was to investigate the effect of domestication upon the early and reproductive behaviours of the house musk shrew Suncus murinus of the order Insectivora. Selection of the adequate animal species, time and labour necessary for the follow-up, and cooperative relations among researchiers are condition essential for this sort of studies. Due to this,only a few studies have so far-een reported. However, this line of approach is expected to contribute to disclosing the intraspacies variation of adaptive behaviour and to provide us with the basic information related to the behaviour evolution.
Wild shrews were trapped in Tarama Island, Okinawa twice for this project term. The captured animals were transferred to our animal laboratory and bred there for domestication. However, we failed in obtaining the related data enough for the analysis of the domestication effect for this term, because the domestication was not so successful.
We reported the data which we had collected for nine years (1980-1988) of our trapping in Tarama and breeding in the laboratory. As the data shows, the wild population has not been decreasion so markedly as was estimated, although the habitat size of high density has been reducing. However, the wild animals from Tarama are hard to breed, as compared with other lines, which has made its domestication less successful. Housing conditions and breeding procedure should be improved in the further study.
Caravaning and mating behaviours were observed with the domesticated shrews and basic traits of the two behaviours were described.
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