Boros István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 2. (Budapest 1952)
Szunyoghy, J.: The effect of castration on the skull of the domestic cat, and the establishment of differentiating characters on the skulls of the domestic cat and the wild cat
The Effect of Castration on the Skull of the Domestic Cat, and the Establishment of Differentiating Characters on the Skulls of the Domestic Cat and the Wild Cat By J. Szunyoghy (Budapest) (With Plate IX—XI) The domestic cat is among the most self-reliable and individualistic domestic animals he is unaccountable, inconfident. He may easily discard all domesticity imbued during time, to emerge agin as the old predatory animal. Our foresters and poultry-raisers couid tell us plenty about it. Mostly tomcats in good condition and castrated males are such. All these but chiefly the latter well exceed females in size. The subject specimen of my paper was a castrated domestic cat of great size, which ignited the popular phantasy of Kecskemét during many months in the columns of the local press in 1936. They were writing of a mysterious predator causing to disappear hens and chicken from the roosts of poultry raisers. The riddle was solved by capturing the malecfator in the person of an extraordinarily developed black and white male cat. By a fortuitous chance he happened to come into my possession. To have a notion of his strength I may say in passing that I had to call on all my power when trying to narcotize him in the sack that he was rolled in (though I was kneeling on him with a help), and yet he almost escaped. When I have compared his skull later with a wild cat skull in the Collection of the Natural History Museum I found that it was not far behind that of the biggest wild cat. This was my reason to look further into the matter. Many investigated the changes in the organisms of domestic animals incurred by castration. So it was stated that its effects are not the same when done on sexually mature or quite young individuals. When the exstirpation of testes happens in the early youth so as to eliminate the effect of their hormones, the development of secondary sexual characters will be checked. Such individuals as regards sexuality will be inid-way between male and female, concurring with certain changes in the evolving of bones, sinews, bowels, etc. In individuals in the state of sexual maturity — where secondary sexual characters have already developed — no such changes will occur with castration, male characters will remain unaffected with a small alteration only in the nature of the animal, e. g. a wild animal will be more easily handled, etc. It would lead far to dwell upon the manifold effects of castration on a young organism. We are only interested now in whether in such cases the ossification of cranial sutures will take place later than in males of the same age, this resulting in larger skulls. This can well be the interpretation of the abnormal cranial size of my examined specimen, showing castration in youth. Cranial modifications effected by castration in our domestic animals may, by the way, well be seen in the cases of horses and asses where the skull of a castrated specimen is longer and narrower, and also —as some state — higher in males than in females, the foramen magnum being smaller. The forehead of an ox is somewhat broad, the face longer, its horns grown longer than in the bulls or cows. Contrariwise, castrated sheep and goats show equally long horns in both sexes. Again, with total exstirpation in youth in deers and roes no horns develop. As is to be seen from these data castration in juvenile stages will show in some form on the skull of the individual, let it be a megacephalic formation as with my tomcat, or just the reverse, in the degradation of horny substances. 12 Természettudományi Múzeum Évkönyve 177
