A whiskery love bite on a hairy bum. It may sound like a perturbing form of foreplay but scientists believe it could help save critically endangered wombat populations in Australia’s north.
Scientists have spent two wombat breeding seasons seeking to better understand the sex lives of vulnerable southern hairy-nosed wombats, using 24-hour infrared cameras and urine samples.
Wombats are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity. Researchers hope that observing the reproductive behaviour of the southern species could help boost the prospects of the critically endangered northern hairy-nosed wombats, of which fewer than 200 remain.
The findings, published in the Reproduction, Fertility and Development journal on Thursday, give greater insight into the reproductive behaviours of captive wombats.
Females were more likely to bite the rumps of males at the most fertile phase of their reproductive cycle, researchers found. Pacing also increased in both duration and frequency of a female being in season.
A University of Queensland associate professor, Stephen Johnston, said understanding behavioural indicators of in-season wombats was important because their size and aggressive nature made them difficult to work with.
The signs could help with the timing of pairings and serve as cues for zoos and wildlife husbandry managers.
“We have developed a way to map the reproductive cycle of the female wombat by measuring hormone levels in their urine,” he said. “Through round-the-clock monitoring over multiple breeding cycles, we detected subtle behavioural changes associated with the fluctuations in this hormonal mapping.”
The decline of the northern hairy-nosed wombats has been largely human-related. Competition for food from grazing animals has been a significant threat, particularly during times of drought, since the arrival of Europeans.
The population is largely contained to colonies in Epping forest national park in central Queensland and the Richard Underwood nature refuge near St George.
They have been the prey of wild dogs and have experienced habitat loss because of land clearing.
The northern hairy-nosed is one of three species of wombat and is the largest, growing up to a metre long and weighing up to 40kg.
There is reason to hope that the species can be brought back from the edge of extinction. A capture-and-release program suggested there were about 63 left in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 2010 a census found 163 wombats, a significant increase.
