Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 23 2008 | By: admin

Finding the dogs using trackers…

This year, as we have done for the last three years, we plan to try to locate all of the wild dog dens in Savé Valley Conservancy. The dogs den down and have their pups starting in around May. They stay at a den for a period of about 3 months or so (sometimes moving the location of the den a short distance within that time). They have large litters, averaging around 10 pups. Normally, one pair breeds and the other dogs help to raise the pups by guarding the den or by providing food to them. The dogs in the pack are usually closely related to the breeding pair (often as brothers or sisters) and so by helping raise the pups they in fact pass on some of their genes. Due to the large litter sizes, a pair of dogs simply can’t raise pups alone. In fact, raising large litters is so demanding that packs below 4-5 individuals usually fail to raise pups. When the pack goes out hunting, one dog usually stays at the den to guard against spotted hyaenas and other predators. There’s not much the guard dog can do if the den is visited by lions though..

The denning period is a very useful time for us, as it enables us to count how many wild dog packs there are, and to get photographic records of all of the packs. At the moment, we only have two of the nine wild dog packs radio collared, which means that we have to find the rest of the packs by using experienced trackers who follow the wild dog spoor. We normally gather reports of wild dog sightings on the conservancy radio network, and then go to the area in which the dogs were seen and follow the tracks. Ruben, featured in the photo below is our most experienced tracker. He has worked with wild dogs for 11 years now and has an amazing ability to find them. His greatest strength is that he understands their behaviour and will often leave the spoor trail and move ahead predicting where he thinks the dogs will be. Often, he then runs into the spoor trail again, saving hours of tracking that would have been needed had he followed the dogs on their circuitous route to their final destination.