Domestic dogs in rural area of fragmented Atlantic Forest: potential threats to wild animals

Abstract

Domestic dogs' skills such as hunting and herding shifted as man migrated from rural areas to developing urban centers and led to a change in human-dog relationship and in the purpose of these animals in the properties. The countryside of Viçosa is characterized by small coffee farms surrounded by RESUMO As habilidades dos cães domésticos como caçadores e pastores modifi caram com a mudança do homem das áreas rurais para os centros urbanos em desenvolvimento, levando para uma mudança nas relações humanos-cães e o propósito desses animais nas propriedades. O município de Viçosa é caracterizado por pequenas fazendas com cafeicultura, cercadas nas bordas por fragmentos de Mata

Caracterização demográfica de cães e gatos e perfil de seus respectivos guardiões domiciliados numa pequena cidade no sul do Brasil

“…During this study, male dogs were predominantly significant (55.8%; 679/1217) within the population evaluated, similar results have been described in other studies from Brazil (MOLENTO et al, 2007;CANATTO et al, 2012;MARTINEZ et al, 2013). Moreover, the predominance of male dogs within canine populations seems to be a worldwide trend, with similar findings occurring in Zimbabwe PULCZER et al, 2013).…”

“…The acquisition of a male or neutered pet has been considered as an efficient form of controlling the growth of urban canine or feline populations (FELDMANN;CARDING, 1973), and might be one of the unintentional reasons for the predominance of male dogs within households worldwide. Additionally, the consequences related with the estrous cycle of bitches has been associated with the comparatively significant number of male dogs in urban (CANATTO et al, 2012) and (MARTINEZ et al, 2013) rural cities. The cost of neutering and the need to reduce unwanted pregnancies also favour the utilization of male dogs as pets (MARTINEZ et al, 2013).…”

“…However, pet population studies of some sort have been done primarily within the regions of Curitiba (BRANCO et al, 2007;SERAFINI et al, 2008;MARTINS et al, 2013), and northwestern regions (MOLENTO et al, 2007) of the state of Paraná, as well as in southeastern (CANATTO et al, 2012;MARTINEZ et al, 2013), northeastern Midwestern (DOMINGOS et al, 2007) regions of Brazil. These studies have investigated the population of pets residing in apartments (SERAFINI et al, 2008), urban (DIAS et al, 2004DOMINGOS et al, 2007;ROCHA et al, 2011;CANATTO et al, 2012;MARTINS et al, 2013) and rural (MARTINEZ et al, 2013) regions of major cities, and the effects of sterilization (MOLENTO et al, 2007) and ownership (MARTINS et al, 2013) on pets, and estimated the canine and feline populations (BRANCO et al, 2007).…”

“…These studies have investigated the population of pets residing in apartments (SERAFINI et al, 2008), urban (DIAS et al, 2004DOMINGOS et al, 2007;ROCHA et al, 2011;CANATTO et al, 2012;MARTINS et al, 2013) and rural (MARTINEZ et al, 2013) regions of major cities, and the effects of sterilization (MOLENTO et al, 2007) and ownership (MARTINS et al, 2013) on pets, and estimated the canine and feline populations (BRANCO et al, 2007). However, no investigation relative to the dynamics of pet dogs and cats residing in small cities of Brazil was located in major databases.…”

Domestic Dog Invasion in an Agroforestry Mosaic in Southern Bahia, Brazil

“…Thus, the higher number of records of dogs in agroforests than in native forests in the study region [16] results mainly from the entrance of a larger number of dogs, rather than from more frequent visits by the same individuals. The higher the number of individuals, the larger the probability of disease transmission to wild animals, adding to the expected negative effects of competition and predation by dogs [34,35,62,63]. Given that the number of people entering managed systems such as agroforests is much higher than in unmanaged native forests, the higher number of dogs in this agricultural system may be simply linked to the behavior of dogs following their owners to work [43].…”