Wild dogs defy the odds with record 2,500-mile trek across Africa
BBC Homepage
Skip to content
Accessibility Help
Sign in
Home
News
Sport
Earth
Reel
Worklife
Travel
Culture
Future
Music
TV
Weather
Sounds
More menu
More menu
Search BBC
Home
News
…
A pack of African wild dogs has completed a record-breaking 2,485-mile (4000km) journey across the continent.
Scientists say it is the farthest recorded distance for any African land mammal searching for a mate, offering hope that wildlife can travel across vast distances despite growing human pressures.
The three brothers zigzagged across Zambia, navigating a landscape increasingly shaped by people and avoiding obstacles including major cities.
However, other wild dogs tracked with GPS collars in the study died in illegal snares, underlining the dangers they face.
Three sisters almost completed an equally epic journey, but stopped when one became trapped in a snare.
African wild dogs are among Africa’s rarest predators, with only about 6,000 remaining in the wild.
They live in highly social packs, hunt together and are known for their vast roaming in search of new territory and breeding opportunities with other packs.
The brothers covered about 260 miles in a straight line over the course of eight months, but travelled nearly 10 times that overall while crossing through a broken-up landscape.
These sorts of journeys are known as dispersals – travelling one way in search of a mate, which is a behaviour distinct from migrations, where animals move back and forth with the seasons in search of food or habitat.
The UN Convention on Migratory Species identifies Africa’s longest migrations as wildebeest moving seasonally between Tanzania and Kenya in search of grazing and water covering more than 400 miles.
Globally, caribou undertake the longest single land migrations of any animal – travelling 839 miles in a round trip, while grey wolves have been recorded travelling more than 4,350 miles over a year.
Perhaps even more significant than the distance itself was the route the wild dogs took through Zambia.
They moved between wildlife strongholds, skirting areas containing major human obstacles, including the capital, Lusaka, and heavily developed industrial areas.
The findings suggest wild dog populations across eastern and southern Africa may remain more connected than conservationists previously believed.
Professor Scott Creel of Montana State University, the paper’s lead author, who has been studying African wild dogs since 1991, said the study provides 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", highlighting the threat of poaching snares.
While the three male wild dogs successfully completed their extraordinary journey, two of the three females died.
Researchers identified a pattern in which surviving pack members repeatedly returned to the same location, a behaviour that often signals the death of a companion.
The research, published in the journal Ecology, adds weight to calls to create strips of natural land outside protected areas to enable wildlife to move freely across landscapes.
