Wild dogs record 2,500-mile trek across Africa in search of a mate

Wild dogs record 2,500-mile trek across Africa in search of a mate

African wild dogs are remarkable long-distance travellers.

A pack of African wild dogs has finished a record-setting 2,485-mile (4000km) trip across the continent.

Scientists say this is the longest recorded distance for any African land mammal searching for a mate, and it gives hope that wildlife can still move across huge distances despite increasing human pressure.

The three brothers zigzagged across Zambia, crossing a landscape that is increasingly shaped by people and steering clear of obstacles such as major cities.

However, other wild dogs fitted with GPS collars for the study were killed in illegal snares, highlighting the risks they face.

Growing human settlements are fragmenting their once-expansive roaming areas.

Three sisters nearly completed a similarly epic journey, but stopped after one became caught in a snare.

African wild dogs are among Africa’s rarest predators, with only about 6,000 left in the wild.

They live in highly social packs, hunt cooperatively and are known for ranging widely in search of new territory and breeding chances with other packs.

They cannot breed within the pack they were born into, so they either wait and may eventually inherit their pack, or leave at the age of two or three to look for a mate.

Over eight months, the brothers covered about 260 miles in a straight line, but in total travelled nearly 10 times that distance while moving through a fragmented landscape.

These journeys are called dispersals - one-way travel in search of a mate, which is different from migrations, where animals move seasonally back and forth in search of food or habitat.

The UN Convention on Migratory Species says Africa’s longest migrations are wildebeest moving seasonally between Tanzania and Kenya in search of grazing and water, covering more than 400 miles.

Worldwide, caribou make the longest single land migrations of any animal - 839 miles in a round trip - while grey wolves have been recorded travelling more than 4,350 miles in a year.

Perhaps even more important than the distance was the route the wild dogs took through Zambia.

They moved between wildlife strongholds, avoiding areas with major human barriers, including the capital, Lusaka, and heavily developed industrial zones.

The results suggest wild dog populations across eastern and southern Africa may be more connected than conservationists had thought.

Professor Scott Creel of Montana State University, the paper’s lead author, who has studied African wild dogs since 1991, said the study offers cautious optimism.

"It's plausible to believe that every major wild dog population in eastern and southern Africa, other than fenced ones, are potentially connected," he said.

But he said, in conservation,"the glass is half empty and the glass is half full", pointing to the threat from poaching snares.

Although the three male wild dogs completed their remarkable journey, two of the three females died.

Researchers found a pattern in which surviving pack members repeatedly returned to the same place, a behaviour that often indicates a companion has died.

, adds weight to calls for strips of natural land outside protected areas that link separate wildlife areas divided by roads, towns, or farms.

Bruce Ellender, one of the paper’s co-authors and Kafue Conservation director for the environmental charity The Nature Conservancy, said species that range over large areas, such as wild dogs and elephants, need connected landscapes if they are to survive in the future.

"We can't see these protected areas as islands and expect them to be functional in the long term, we need to think much broader than that," he said.