But hyenas are also social animals, and researchers found that the dogs generally lost their kills to hyenas when their numbers were equal. A pack of wild dogs making a coordinated attack on one or two hyenas can easily drive them off.
Several hyenas often trailed the dogs even as they set out to hunt, and hyenas quickly aggregated when the dogs killed a gazelle or wildebeest – often alerted by the unmistakable sound of vultures plummeting through the air in their own race to the fresh carcass.Īlthough they are half the size, wild dogs do not easily give up a kill to hyenas. Over the next year, I occasionally followed the dogs to watch them hunt on the shortgrass plains, where they were constantly shadowed by spotted hyenas. Understanding how is essential for their conservation. Research that my colleagues with the Zambian Carnivore Programme and I have conducted in Zambia and Tanzania suggests why smaller, subordinate species like wild dogs are better able to move through human-modified landscapes. There may be a silver lining to being the bottom dog in the competitive hierarchy. Weighing in at about 40-62 pounds (18-28 kilograms), wild dogs have been shaped by the necessity to compete with larger species like the lion and spotted hyena. Cooperation with pack mates allows them to hunt prey much larger than themselves. Wild dogs are lanky, long-distance hunters that always live in groups, usually of eight to 10 adults. For several million years, African wild dogs have evolved within a set of large carnivores that all prey on the same large herbivore species, like wildebeest and warthogs. Within these limited areas, they must compete for the same food sources.Ĭompetition is, of course, nothing new. Increasingly, lions, hyenas and African wild dogs are restricted to protected areas like national parks. Large carnivores in Africa are important from ecological, economic and cultural perspectives, but human activities put them at risk.
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