Goin’ to the Dogs

Well, it finally happened. I finally got to see Botswana’s famed African wild dogs!

On Friday Olf and I drove to Dog Camp to spend the weekend. We were supposed to take Stopper with us as well, but when I arrived in Shorobe to pick up the guys, Stopper declined because he had made other plans. I drove out to Camp in Bear, and it was great! The truck handled it well, which was a relief.

Me & Briana before heading out to find the dogs

On Saturday Briana and I went looking for Matthew’s pack, a large pack of dogs numbering 18 adults and 12 puppies! Tracking the dogs is an all-day affair. Their denning season, when they are tied to a den with small pups, is over so now they are mobile and range across huge distances in relatively short periods of time. Finding the dogs requires as much luck as skill, so you head out in the morning and try to find the dogs and once you do you spend the rest of the day with them until sunset – no returning to Camp for lunch and a siesta as with the other carnivores. The time is spent identifying which individuals are present, visually assessing their health and recording behavioral observations. Fortunately, that morning we got a signal for one of the collared dogs in Matthew’s pack and, after a little time searching for some lions who were also in the area, caught up with the pack around 1 pm, at which time they were all conked out napping through the hottest part of the day. Luckily for me and Briana, they had chosen to nap in a copse of large trees that provided plenty of shade for us as well!

African wild dogs are also called "painted dogs," for obvious reasons

Matthew’s pack has been studied for some years, so the adults are all perfectly habituated to the vehicle and our presence; wild dogs are normally very shy creatures so having the chance to see them up close is a privilege. This closeness allowed us to get right up next to the dogs to identify them by their coat patterns – each one is as unique as a finger print, and BPCT has drawings of each dog’s white spots to help researchers identify the animals. It sounds really easy, but with 18 dogs and similar coat patterns passing from generation to generation, it took longer than I anticipated! We originally thought that only 16 adults were present (sometimes the pack breaks into smaller groups for short periods of time) so Briana and I figured we had to ID all the animals who were present in order to figure out who was missing. Two hours later, we were able to count the dogs when they got up and did a greeting ritual and realized that all 18 were present so there wasn’t a need to ID any of them! Oops! 🙂

The puppies are indescribably adorable. Even in the heat of the mid-day, they huddled together in a giant pile of limbs and Mickey Mouse-shaped ears. They were a little nervous of the truck, since they are so young, but the calm presence of the other pack members helped them calm down once we turned off the engine. Around 4 pm, when it got a little cooler, they started getting more and more playful and it was hard not to fall in love with them.

A playful pup and his chewtoy, with a pile of siblings in the background

Surprisingly, 10 pups is the average size litter, so 12 isn’t considered all that large. Unfortunately, many smaller packs suffer from high pup mortality rates, but larger packs, such as Matthew’s have considerable more success. One of the other packs that BPCT monitors has only 3 adults and of their 7 pups, none survived the denning season. Strength in numbers obviously helps.

Packs consist of a breeding pair, subordinate males who are related to the breeding male, the teen-aged offspring of the breeding pair, and their young pups. Females disperse from their natal packs – so when a female wild dog gets to breeding age, she leaves and forms a pack of her own by meeting up with a group of young males. Sometimes sisters disperse together, but then only one of them becomes the breeding female in their new pack, or they eventually split up. Males, especially brothers, stick together as in cheetahs.

One of the four collared dogs from Matthew's pack

Interestingly, except for the fact that the breeding pair is the only pair of dogs to produce offspring, there isn’t much domination of other pack members. In grey wolves aggression is used to maintain pack hierarchy and each individual has a place within the pack that is strictly enforced by the dominant pair. But in wild dogs, sociality is expressed through touch and aggression very rarely enters the picture. Furthermore, what hierarchy exists seems rather loose; just last week one of the youngest members lead the pack on a hunt. This means that wild dogs are very peaceable animals who don’t deserve the bloodthirsty reputation they’ve acquired through folklore.

The dogs sleep clumped together, lounging another in all sorts of adorable ways

One of the most fascinating aspects of wild dog behavior is the greeting ritual that they do. Briana and I had spent about 2 hours with the dogs, trying to identify the adults and watching them sleep, when suddenly a few of the adults got up and moved over to another group and started vocalizing. It’s hard to describe – a very high-pitched twittering that reminds me of bats, oddly enough. While vocalizing the dogs move around, licking each other and rubbing against one another. At the sound of the vocalizations, the pups also got up and ran around frantically, trying to greet as many adults as possible to reaffirm their pack bonds. The greeting lasted about 5 minutes and then all the dogs laid back down and went to sleep!

Two pups greeting each other, with an adult and pup greeting in the background

After another hour of sleep, the dogs performed another greeting and then headed off for a hunt, at which point Briana and I headed back to Camp.

It was absolutely wonderful to see the dogs; they are the flagship species of the BPCT’s research program, and are rare throughout Africa and as I said it is a privilege to observe them so closely. I am looking forward to going back to Camp some time in the future and seeing them again! I am in the process of uploading more photos to my SmugMug page, so keep an eye out for them soon!