The African Hunting Dog

Paper Summary:

The hunting strategies of the African wild dog were behavior once shrouded in inaccurate myth. The dogs were formerly considered among the roughest and meanest species on the African savanna and bushland. The paper shows that they were noted for driving out all other species in their regions, for mutilating their victims beyond recognition, as well as for consuming their own kind who had fallen prey to illness or exhaustion. The paper shows, however, that researchers have recently taken a closer look at the animals' morphological, physiological and adaptive characteristics, their methods of locating prey, as well as their prey-capture techniques and food allocation practices. New studies have presented a wildly different version of the African wild dog.

From the Paper:

"According to recent research, the prime habitat for wild dogs is not the open, grassy plains but rather the woodland-savanna areas which support larger populations of prey due to the interspersion of seasonally-flooded grasslands in these areas. The animals' diet consists largely of impala (80-85%), with the remaining percentage distributed among red lechwe, reedbuck, steenbok (antelope types), and the juveniles of kudu, buffalo, tsessebe, zebra and wildebeest. Most of these animals are nearly ten times the weight of the average hunting dog. They are also common in the regions where wild dogs exist, so that locating their prey is not often difficult."

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