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| African Wild Dog - N/a'an ku se Wildlife Sanctuary |
Why I love Wild Dogs:
1) Family means everything to them; their social order is fundamental to their survival.
They usually live in packs of around 10 individuals made up mostly of brothers, sisters and offspring. Only the Alfa pair breed and the whole pack works together to raise the young, bringing in food and working as babysitters in turn. Sometimes a non-Alfa female will breed, and in many situations it has been recorded that the Alfa will either raise the pups as her own or kill them. Wild Dogs produce the biggest litter of any of the canine family bearing up to 16 pups at a time!
2) They are epic hunters.
Wild Dogs have an unusually high hunting success rate of around 80% - which means if you see them hunting you are quite likely to see them make a kill... If you can keep up. In comparison Cheetahs on average are around 50% successful. This is because they are endurance hunters and work together as a pack. Incredibly they can keep up a speed of 40 km/hour for about an hour and often chase their prey to exhaustion before grotesquely disembowelling and eating it alive. Although this seems cruel the death is actually quicker and more humane than cheetah and lions' strangle grip. Their main prey is medium sized antelope such as impala and springbok.
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| A herd of impala: average food source for Wild Dogs - Shamwari |
3) They can't be domesticated.
Most people hear the name "dog" and simply thing that these are animals that were once pets but now run free. NOT TRUE! This is one of the most ancient species of canids on Earth and developed on a completely separate lineage to domestic dogs. Unlike Wolves, Wild Dogs will not accept a human as part of the pack as their structure relies so strongly on family lineage - instead they will completely ignore a human (unless for food) and would never be able to be domesticated. They defy humanities desire to have control over everything!
4) They know no boundaries.
Wild Dogs love to run - they will run for miles and miles and very few reserves can contain them. They really are true wild animals and I love them for that.
5) They have individual personalities.
I haven't spent nearly enough time with these animals and I would love a chance to really study them properly. But the small amount of time I have seen them, and what I have watched on Wildlife Documentaries (although there are few that feature Wild Dogs) you can really see that each animal is an individual, bringing different skills and abilities to the pack. They speak to each other and greet each member of the pack individually after being separated. They really are highly intelligent creatures.
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| The Wild Dogs of N/a'an ku se |
Sadly the African Wild Dogs are under great threat and are the second most endangered carnivore in Africa (behind the Ethiopian Wolf)... There is currently an estimated population of between 3,000-5,000 left in the wild. So many of the things I love about them is what drives them towards extinction:
1) Family means everything to them; their social order is fundamental to their survival.
Close pack life means that disease spreads through the family like wild-fire. Many packs die of diseases such as rabies - often passed on from local domestic dogs.
2) They are epic hunters.
Successful hunting in the past has often brought them in to competition with other hunting animals - lions will kill them. They are also habitual livestock killers so farmers will kill whole packs of Wild Dogs in an effort to protect their livelihood.
3) They can't be domesticated.
Many animals survival has relied on their abilities to live alongside, and even amongst human beings. Animals that can be domesticated and benefit the human population will always survive.
4) They know no boundaries.
Most African animals now purely survive in protected game reserves where a fence stands between them and poachers. The fact that Wild Dogs don't survive in these smaller fenced off areas means that they are harder to protect.
It breaks my heart that these animals face such difficult times, and I hope that I get my chance to really see and get to know them in the wild before they are gone.
Please let me know what you think about this article and what you know about African Wild Dogs. You can also see more of my pictures of the Wild Dogs at N/a'an ku se in my post "Feeding the African Wild Dogs".
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