The African Wild Dog

A huge amount of time and effort has been, and still is, being put towards keeping the successfully released pack of dogs back into the reserve at Erindi. Three times a charm they say – lets hope this charm stays forever.

This rare canid has only about six countries where a viable population lives wild in expanding areas put towards farming and other human creations. Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa in the Kruger National Park, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Some packs have extreme home ranges and some from Botswana flow into North Eastern Namibia.  Average pack sizes are around 10 – 15 but some can be up to 40 – 50 animals. They all help one another to raise the small pups with an average of 10 pups a litter produced by the alpha pair, by regurgitating food up, providing soft chewed meat for the little ones.

One of the females of the pack is heavily pregnant and has recently been noted by all the guides to be seperated from the pack each time we find them – a sign that maybe she has dropped the litter already…

Cheetahs