Painted Dogs I

African Wild Dogs are for me almost mythical creatures. Secretly, this whole trip was really focussed on a burning desire to  see them in the wild. To my great delight, I spent a day and two mornings in their company, and I am going to spread them out over more than one posting.

The more poetic name for them is Painted Dogs, reflected in their scientific name, Lycaon pictus, which derives from the Greek for ‘wolf’ and the Latin for ‘painted’. Each one has its own distinctive body pattern:

They live and hunt in large packs: the pack in my photos has 20 dogs. They have a close-knit social structure, led by an alpha male and alpha female pair, who are the only ones to breed. They do however have large litters, up to 20 pups, with 10 being the average. The entire adult pack regurgitates food to feed the young (and also any elderly and injured dogs).

When I first saw them they were resting in a damp riverbed to escape the heat of the day. There were heaps of comatose dogs strewn around everywhere, and their coloration is such that it takes some time to work out how many different dogs there are in a single cosy pile:

Their intimacy is intensely appealing:

Next time, the hunt…