Serum oxytocin and lipid levels of dogs with maternal cannibalism

Koçkaya, Mustafa; Ercan, Nazlı; Demirbas, Yasemin Salgirli; Pereira, Goncalo Da Graça

doi:10.1016/j.jveb.2018.05.002

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Butler et al (2020) showed that activation of galanin neurons in the lateral tuberal nucleus of the brain is associated with feeding and offspring cannibalism in mouthbrooding female cichlids Astatotilapia burtoni. Serum oxytocin levels are known to be lower in female dogs that have cannibalised their pups relative to females that have not (Kockaya et al, 2018). Overall, only a few studies have begun to explore the mechanisms underlying parentoffspring cannibalism and future studies should attempt to clarify the molecular processes that modulate the expression of this behaviour.…”

Section: (D) Mechanisms Of Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parent–offspring cannibalism throughout the animal kingdom: a review of adaptive hypotheses

Bose

2022

Biological Reviews

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Parents that kill and consume their offspring often appear to be acting against their own reproductive interests. Yet parentoffspring cannibalism is common and taxonomically widespread across the animal kingdom. In this review, I provide an overview of our current understanding of parent-offspring cannibalism, which has seen a proliferation in adaptive hypotheses over the past 20 years for why parents consume their own young. I review over four decades of research into this perplexing behaviour, drawing from work conducted on fishes, reptiles, insects, birds, and mammals among other taxa. Many factors have been hypothesised to explain parent-offspring cannibalism in nature, including poor parental energy reserves, small or large brood sizes, low or uncertain parentage, and high brood densities, and additional factors are still being uncovered. Parent-offspring cannibalism does not appear to have a single predominant explanation; rather, the factor, or set of factors, that govern its expression is largely taxon specific. Parents may either consume all offspring under their care (fullbrood cannibalism) or consume a fraction of their offspring (partial brood cannibalism). These forms of cannibalism are thought to provide adaptive benefits to cannibals under a range of circumstances, primarily by allowing parents to allocate parental efforts more optimallyenergy from eating (some of) one's current offspring can be redirected to other offspring, or to parental growth, survival, and ultimately to other future reproductive endeavours. Thus, parent-offspring cannibalism is a phenotypically plastic trait that responds to changing environmental, social, and physiological conditions. The expression of parent-offspring cannibalism in any given system is intimately linked to the reproductive value of current young relative to parents' expectations for future reproduction, and also to whether parental care is predominantly depreciable or non-depreciable. Furthermore, parent-offspring cannibalism has the potential to generate conflict between the sexes, and I briefly discuss some consequences of this conflict on patterns of mate choice. Finally, there still remain many aspects of this behaviour where our understanding is poor, and I highlight these topics to help guide future research.

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Section: (D) Mechanisms Of Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parent–offspring cannibalism throughout the animal kingdom: a review of adaptive hypotheses

Bose

2022

Biological Reviews

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“…Maternal cannibalism is also called cronyism [45], and it is a condition where a dam consumes her offspring after killing them [92,93]. It is abnormal maternal behaviour unless it is a strategy to reduce litter size, balance the sex ratio of the offspring, eliminate the offspring that has come out defective [80,94] or when there is a poor significant environmental condition [95].…”

Section: Cannibalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal behaviour in domestic dogs

Lezama-García

Mariti

Mota-Rojas

et al. 2019

International Journal of Veterinary Science and Medicine

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Mammalian parental care, in most of the cases, is given by the female, who provides food, warmth, and protection. In domestic dogs, maternal behaviour shown by the dam mainly consists of contact, nursing, grooming/licking, play, punishment, thermoregulation, and motion. Peer-reviewed literature published between 1952 and 2018 was retrieved from CAB Abstracts, PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus and book chapters. Keywords for this search included the following terms: behaviour, bonding, altricial, precocial, offspring, maternal, whelping, nursing, domestic dogs, female dog, aggression, puppies, anogenital licking. In this review, we reported and discussed scientific information about maternal behaviour in domestic bitches, comparing altricial vs precocial species; the importance of the bonding, grooming/licking and nursing, and their impacts on puppies' behaviour; altered maternal behaviours such as aggression, cannibalism, rejection, and also the relation between hormones and maternal care behaviours. We concluded that the level of interactions between the dam and the puppies influences the physiological, cognitive and behavioural development of the litter, and the main hormones in the bitch for inducing maternal care behaviours are estradiol, oxytocin, prolactin and progesterone. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…Parturitional hormones are major internal factors that control the onset and expression of maternal behavior. In dogs, changes in estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, and oxytocin from pregnancy, around parturition and throughout the lactation period are likely to act upon the brain to promote maternal care ( 132 ), similar to their roles in rats ( 133 , 134 ). Indeed, similar changes in these hormones as reported in other species (e.g., sheep and rats) are also found in dogs ( 135 ).…”

Section: Commonalities and Differences Between Rat And Dog Maternal B...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This negative finding may be due the fact that salivary oxytocin does not necessarily reflect central oxytocin function ( 137 ), and other methodological issues (e.g., stress) may have masked this relation. Kockaya et al identified a correlation between the low serum level of oxytocin and maternal cannibalism (i.e., a dam consumes her offspring) in mature female Kangal dogs ( 132 ). They found that serum oxytocin was significantly lower in dogs with a previous history of maternal cannibalism, indirectly suggesting that oxytocin might be an important factor contributing to the normal onset of maternal behavior in dogs ( 132 ).…”

Section: Commonalities and Differences Between Rat And Dog Maternal B...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Roadmap for maternal behavior research in domestic dogs: lessons from decades of laboratory rodent work

2024

Front. Vet. Sci.

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Maternal behavior research in laboratory rats has revealed important behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms governing the onset, maintenance and decline of maternal behavior. However, the extent to which these mechanisms are evolutionarily conserved across species is less clear. This manuscript proposes that examining these mechanisms in dogs may be a viable approach to test their generality and help bridge the gap between rodent and human research, as domestic dogs show greater individual differences and exhibit more human-like maternal characteristics than rodents. These aspects represent advantages over rodent models, which in turn allow systems biological approaches not available in rodents. Additionally, domestic dogs share similar social environments with humans, suffer from the same mental disorders as humans, and can be treated with the same medications. This paper begins with a summary of key findings and theoretical developments from decades of rat maternal behavior research, followed by a literature review of the extant maternal behavior research on dogs and related methodology, highlighting the unique behavioral characteristics of dog maternal behavior and similarities and differences from rat maternal behavior. Finally, several knowledge gaps in dog maternal behavior research, as well as the future research in this area is discussed. It concludes that research on dog maternal behavior will not only advance our understanding of the universality of the neurobiological and behavioral mechanisms in maternal behavior, but also improve our understanding of risk factors associated with postpartum mental disorders.

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Serum oxytocin and lipid levels of dogs with maternal cannibalism

Cited by 10 publications

References 42 publications

Parent–offspring cannibalism throughout the animal kingdom: a review of adaptive hypotheses

Parent–offspring cannibalism throughout the animal kingdom: a review of adaptive hypotheses

Maternal behaviour in domestic dogs

Roadmap for maternal behavior research in domestic dogs: lessons from decades of laboratory rodent work

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