Wild Dog Portrait.
Lycaon pictus, African wild dog, Cape hunting dog, African painted wolf. All these names describe the same animal – a sleek and slender predator, weighing no more than 30 kgs, with long thin legs, a large head, rounded black ears, a marbled coat and a white tipped tail. Perhaps the most successful hunter on the sub- continent it is ironically enough also the most endangered.
Wild dogs live together in packs of 6 to 30
animals. The pack is largely made up of males and only one female has
pups at any one time. The dogs are very sociable and all members of a
pack help in feeding the young. There is seldom any aggression between
members and indeed they greet each other with displays of cringing and
nuzzling. Wild dogs are quite vocal and their vocabulary includes
high-pitched twittering, whines and yelps, barks and whoops.A wild dog pack has a huge hunting range, which can extend from 500 to 2000 sq. km. They are very efficient hunters and operate as a team during the hunt, relying on their speed and stamina to exhaust their prey. They pull down small to medium sized animals with ease and are able to kill animals much larger than themselves like kudu, waterbuck and wildebeest.
On most occasions the pack is able to defend itself against other predators, the dogs aided by their speed, but they are sometimes killed by lions and leopards. Their greatest threat however is man, who has over the years regarded them as vermin and shot them on sight.
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