Title
Do perfumes attract toucans?
Author(s)
Viscarra, M. E.;Ayala, G. M.;Wallace, R. B.
Published
2019
Publisher
Ornitología Neotropical
Abstract
Since 2011, Wildlife Conservation Society has implemented the use of two commercial perfumes (Chanel No 5 and Calvin Klein Obsession for Men) as bait in their camera traps, with the purpose of retaining the wild cats for longer in front of the cameras and improving the identification of individuals in Madidi National Park and Natural Area of Integral Management, Bolivia. This methodology has turned out to be very efficient, yielding not only a large number of photographs of several mammals, but also recording several bird species. One of the groups that had not been registered in 10 years of camera-trap sampling without perfume (2001-2009) were toucans (family Ramphastidae). Here we report observations that suggest that toucans are attracted by both perfumes. During six years of sampling (2011-2016), four species of toucans were detected by the camera-traps: Pteroglossus azara, Pteroglossus beauharnaesii, Ramphastos tucanus, and Ramphastos vitellinus, obtaining 550 photographs across 45 independent photographic events. The species with the highest number of photographs was R. tucanus (n = 231), followed by R. vitellinus (n = 219). Toucans were recorded within 3 m in 29% of cases, within 30 cm 29% of cases and making direct contact with the perfume jar in 42% of cases. Toucan-perfume interactions lasted up to 12.5 min maximum and a minimum of 0.5 min. We believe that these results are important contributions to the natural history of toucans and suggest an alternative for studies that require live capture.
Keywords
Attraction;Bolivia;Camera traps;Madidi National Park;Olfaction;Perfumes;Toucans;keel-billed toucans;movement patterns;forest;tiger;Zoology
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PUB24994