Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Carnivores general, Denning, Other wildlife, Wild Dogs, zimbabwe | Date: Aug 11 2009 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi Folks,

A couple weeks ago the Teddy pack suffered a hard loss. I came across 4 dead pups at the Teddy Den. The pups were seen the day before by another member of the conservancy, 100 meters or so away from the den, alive and resting on the ground with no adults seemingly in the area, which seemed odd to begin with. The next day they were in the same area dead, most probably due to lions. We found lots of lion spoor and since we had a camera trap at the den we inevitably caught lions on camera as well at the den. We still don’t know exactly why the pups were out of the den unattended and with lions being in the area all signs point to them as the cause of the incident. Another odd situation was the decision for the dogs to remain at the den even after the visit from the lions. If you notice the date on the pictures below, the lions were at the den about 9 days before the pups were found dead. There were no other pictures of lions thereafter and the most recent pictures taken on the camera trap were taken the night before and were not discernable. We only have a couple of infrared cameras and unfortunately this particular den had a regular motion detector camera, so the pictures we got the night before were completely black, although some movement had to have set it off.  The dead pups were the first ever visual of the Teddy pack pups even from the camera trap, so we do not know exactly if these are all the pups. Since the incident our trackers have been searching for the Teddy pack but no signs of them as of now. 

In the first two pictures below you can see the second lion on the top right hand side just barely in the photo.

till next time -Rafael