THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Well, Tender at the Bone is admittedly the title of a book about food (if you love food and good writing as much as I do, this is a fantastic book by food critic Ruth Reichl), but I borrowed the phrase to continue our discussion about dental health and chewing on bones. If you haven’t followed it yet, read the comments from my A Fully Functional Tooth? post, they add lots of meat to the conversation (sorry).

A few readers asked for more photos from Africa, so I thought I’d combine topics and send some more pictures of our time with the pack of African Wild Dogs.

Relevant to dental health, here’s a photo of the mouth of “Jones,” the 4 year old breeding male who was darted and radio collared when we were there watching. What I think is interesting is how good some teeth look (keeping in mind the comment made earlier reminding us that white, clean teeth are not necessarily healthy teeth) and how bad the 2 problem teeth are. The bright red area on the lower gum, by the way, was probably caused by either the act of predation that morning or from ingesting part of the kill, and was only temporary.

But, look at the lower canine and upper incisor. Ouch. I’ll have to ask Dr. McNutt how common it is to see a set of teeth like that, but I’d guess it’s not uncommon at all. There is a high rate of injury (and death) in African Wild Dogs, either from lions or from injuries received while taking down prey. What happened to these particular teeth? Who knows… could be from chewing on bones, or from strikes by horns of ungulates?

In case the photo above is a little bit more intimate than you want to get with a AWD, here’s a portrait showing off their huge, gorgeous, cartoon animal ears.

And here’s a photo of the pups just seconds after an adult had walked in and regurgitated for them. It all happened behind the bush, and was over, from start to finish, in about 4-5 seconds, but you can see one of the pups licking his lips, apparently having been one of the lucky ones and getting his share of the food.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Will is back to chewing on his stuffed Kong in the morning, and I haven’t gone out to find just the right real bone to give to him and Lassie. Admittedly, although I have decided to let them eat carefully selected bones for a short time, I haven’t yet gone looking for them.

It was sweltering hot and humid last night (okay, all is relative: hot for here at this time of year). Mostly it was humid without a breath of fresh air. It’s a bit better today, and tomorrow it will be better still. Can’t wait for the nights to get cool again so I can snuggle under a blanket with Lassie on one side and Willie on the other!

This summary doesn’t begin to address the subject in depth, to do so would require a book, but I hope you’ll find what I’ve written interesting nonetheless. My biggest problem with this was not spending all week on it… the topic is so interesting, and almost every fact led to a question. (Territorial? Well, that’s a highly variable concept. How does it differ between species, say dogs and wolves for example.) You can see the problem here, but one of the great things about science is that it every answer generates new questions. That’s heaven for discovery junkies like me.

AFRICAN WILD DOGS  Lycaon pictus:

Also known as Cape Hunting Dogs or Painted Dogs, these canids are not “dogs” at all (note they are in a different genus than wolves and dogs). Called the wolves of Africa, they are highly social, territorial carnivores who are more dependent on group hunting than any other canid. They specialize in medium sized prey (Impala are their preferred prey) and like Hyenas, tend to rely on running their prey to exhaustion rather than the classic stalk and pounce of some canids and most big cats. (They also, like Hyenas, hunt mostly at night, thus stalking is of less importance under the cover of darkness.) They do NOT run in “relays” as often described, but tend to run in loose groups, well spread out, so that a zig-zagging quarry has a higher chance of running into another pack member when they change direction. AWDs have incredible stamina: they can run 5 km at 30 mph.

I’m not sorry I missed seeing a kill. AWDs have an incredibly high success rate as hunters (about 85%) and usually disembowl and begin consuming their prey before the animal is dead. Granted, it is probably in shock, and well might not be feeling anything at all, but I’ve seen a crocodile consume a Gazelle, and 3 African Bullalo kill another full grown buffalo, and a lion with a freshly killed zebra foal–and that’s enough for me.

Their social system is similar in many ways to that of wolves. There is usually only one breeding pair (but note there are exceptions in wolves, not sure if true in AWDs), along with non-breeding adults who also care for the young and provision the mother and pups. Unlike most social mammals in which the males leave the group and the females stay, related males stay in the pack in this species and older females emigrate if the pack becomes too large. They are completely reliant on being in a group. One study I read said that less than a group of less than 6 or 8 AWDs were incapable of successful reproduction (due no doubt to less predatory success). Their packs can become quite large, sometimes as many as 20 to 40 dogs will live in one pack.

What’s different about AWDs and Wolves is how the breeding pair maintain their rank. Apparently there are very few overt displays of aggression; you see almost none of the facial displays, growls or dominance  related actions that are commonly seen in wolves. AWDs were believed at one point not to have a social hierarchy, but careful study found that wild dogs assert their social status by assuming the same stalking posture that they use when hunting or by simply supplanting (taking the space of) another. You DO see a lot of submissive behavior, from ears-back, toothy-grinned submission displays, food begging & whining. Adults will often regurgitate food to adult pack members who missed out on a kill (which happens often, since the hunting pack is so dispersed and the food is usually consumed within just a few minutes.) (more…)

As you know if you’ve been following the blog, 1/2 the folks who went to Kenya continued on to Botswana. We all knew that seeing Wild Dogs wasn’t a guarantee, but we had high hopes because we were going where and when our chances were highest. (And no, in response to one comment, there are no [African] Wild Dogs in the states, we’re talking another species here, see photos below.) We stayed at Chitabe Camp in the Okavango Delta, owned and run by Helene Heldring and David Hamman, and very close to the research station of Tico McNutt, who has been studied AWDs for over twenty years. We knew that he had radio collars on most of the packs in the area, and we knew that it was still denning season, meaning that the adults tended to stay put more than usual. Still, as an experienced naturalist told us “Seeing AWDs is a gift you can never count on.”

Finding the dogs turned out to be the adventure of a life time. First off, 7 of us got split off from the rest, missed our plane and arrived 1 and a half days late. (Actually barely made it, bush plane couldn’t land in the dark and we and our luggage were literally thrown from one plane to the next in Maun with only minutes to spare.) The six of the group that made it on time (Barbara, Barb, Lisa, Jane, Debbie & Pam) spent 4 hours the first afternoon and 14 hours (really) the next day looking for the dogs. One of the pack was radio-collared, but you have to be within 2 km to get a signal, and the dogs had moved from their usual area because of floods earlier in the year. They finally found them late in the afternoon of the 2nd day, about two hours drive from our tent camp.

Re-united, we all (with a few exhausted exceptions) took off at 6:30 the next morning, driving back to the area where the dogs had been seen.  First we drove about an hour and half on what we would call a track and Botswanans call a road. A plane had been circling overhead looking as well, and the pilot found the dogs and radio’ed in coordinates. After approaching the area, we left the sandy rutted track and began driving ‘off road,’ which included driving not through a woods of Mopane trees, but over them. Imagine driving toward a 12 foot tall tree, with 3 or 4 three inch wide trunks, and simply driving into it and over it. Absurdly, the trees pop back up like cartoon figures, and the damage to the area is minimal. Still, the camp and researchers only go off road when they are doing research and have no choice.

Here’s Tico holding up the antenna, looking for a signal from the collared dog:

After about 45 minutes, Tico said “There!” And there they were. First we saw an adult, and then immediately came upon this scene:

The photo is a bit fuzzy,  my apologies.  The light was a bit low, but mostly I was shaking with excitement. The 12-14 pups (we were never totally sure) were seeing a vehicle for the 2nd time only in their life, and they immediately took off after this photo was taken. Unfortunately, the pups had just developed to the point in which they no longer dashed down into the den when they were frightened. That meant that instead of staying still, the pups ran off and the adults had no choice but to run after them. We followed slowly through (and over) the thick, brushy woods, stopping often to avoid scaring the pups, Tico always holding up the antenna to keep our electronic connection with them.

Lucky for us and for Tico, who wanted to radio collar another member of the pack, the pack stopped after about 30-45 minutes, and we were able to stop close by and watch them while Tico prepared to place a radio collar on another individual. (He always tries to keep 2 members of the pack collared, since mortality is high and losing a radio collared pack member means losing the pack.)

We all sat breathless as Tico prepared the tranquilizer and dart gun, and groaned as a group when his first shot was lifted by a puff of wind and landed in the sand. He prepared another, seconds counting down, and this time the dart bounced off the hip of the female he was targeting. More groans all around. However, it might have been a blessing, because he had wanted to collar “Jones,” the breeding male and had decided against him because he didn’t look settled enough to get close to. (I think that was the most fun I had on the entire trip… realizing that I too had concluded that Jones wouldn’t stay still if we drove close: even though he was lying down, he had never turned his head toward us, although we were only 30 feet away. I loved being able to transfer reading a domestic dog to reading an African Wild Dog!)

After the second darting attempt, Jones looked more settled, so we slowly approached him (in our vehicle), Tico raised the dart gun one more time, we again held our breaths and this time the dart flew straight and true, into Jones’ thigh muscle (only safe target). Jones lept up, ran 10 feet away, and then circled around for a few minutes, lying down conveniently in the shade. Tico and driver BeBe then took measurements and collared Jones, and eventually we all were allowed to come down and see Jones close up, pet his stiff fur and look at his two horrendously infected teeth. Ouch.

Here’s Erin getting a once in a lifetime encounter with one of the world’s most endangered species:

And here’s Tico giving Jones the andidote, after about 40 minutes of data collection and collaring:

We stayed with Jones until he was well up and recovering. I asked Tico if there were ever challenges to a dog’s social status if it returned to the pack a bit woozy, but he said he’d never seen a sign of it. He had worried about that very thing his first year of research, and actually removed the dog from the pack for a day to avoid a power shift. Eventually he found that to be unnecessary, and has not seen any problems in all the subsequent years he’s collared dogs.

This post is getting a bit, uh, lengthy, so I’ll postpone talking about comparative AWD/Wolf/Coyote/Dog behavior til later (if you’re interested… or is this getting boring?  let me know, truly!).

Last comments: Someone with the improbable name of Tico McNutt (I mean, really!) can be one of the most inspiring, dedicated, knowledgeable and kind people imaginable. He has three graduate students working with him now, and has spent over twenty years working with the highly endangered wild dogs. I don’t doubt that he is one of the reasons that dogs are holding their own in Botswana now. And Chitabe Camp is without question one of the most amazing places on earth. The tents are gorgeous inside (complete with blow ups of David’s astounding photographs over your comfy bed), baboons play on the roofs of the tents outside, the entire place is brilliantly run and profoundly eco-sensitive. I said this was my last trip to Africa, and it probably is, but if anything pulled me back it would be the AWD research and Chitabe Camp.

Here’s one more photo of the dogs (sorry, I just can’t resist):

Why Grandma, what big ears you have!

Meanwhile, back at the farm: No photos yet, but it is green and lush and cool and I feel like I’ve fallen into an emerald. Lassie and Willie and Sushi are wonderful, two of my ewes are struggling with a still unknown disease, the lambs are thriving and the grass is bountiful. Oh my it is good to be home!

Back in the Jo’berg airport again, but this time after having spent two days in the Okavango Delta at Chitabe Tent Camp. 1/2 of us arrived 1 1/2 days late, having barely made it when our last flight was delayed and the sun’s descent meant we might not be able to take the small plane to the isolated camp: couldn’t land after dark. But we squeaked in, blank eyed and exhausted and then spent two days in heaven.  We not only saw AWD’s, we were able to be with Tico when he radio collared “Jones,” the dominant breeding male of a pack about two 1/2 hours away from the camp.

The group that arrived on time spent 5 hours one afternoon/evening and 14 hours with  Tico and his radio transmitter trying to find the pack, which they found late the afternoon the rest of us arrived. We left early the next morning, in hopes the pack hadn’t moved, and after driving not through a woods but over it (to be explained when I return) we found one adult, and then bang, right straight in front of us: 12 or 14 pups, just out of the den. The adults are habituated to people, but the pups were just out of the den in that they were no longer running back to it, so they took off and the adults followed. We carefully followed them for about 45 minutes, radio antenna held on high, and they finally settled down, pups and adults both.

It was a wonderful experience for people who want to see what field work is really like: Tico’s first 2 darts missed, we were almost out of time (he had a plane to catch later that day) but the 3rd time was a charm, and Jones got the dart full in the thigh muscle (only possible target), and went down close by in 10 minutes.
We all got to watch Tico take all his data, put the radio collar on Jones, and then we all got to get out and touch Jones, look into  his mouth (poor guy, two horribly infected teeth), pet his stiff, hard fur. It was miraculous. Most people never ever get to see dogs, even after spending hours, days, weeks, looking, and we spent most of the  morning with them. Amazing.  Photos to follow.

Three more planes to home (have taken 2 already). Others waiting for a terminal to check in, so will go now. All on trip are fine, full of stories of wonder and adventure. Some good, some not so good, but all experiences to cherish the rest of our lives.

I’m coming Lassie….. soon.

Trisha

Hard to imagine we’re on our way to Africa tomorrow. Even though it’s my fourth trip, going to Africa still seems like something I could only dream about, never really do. Of course, the only dreaming at this point is of things I might have forgotten, and worries about leaving the dogs and the sheep. It will be such a relief to finally be on the plane and let it all go. I think of trips like this as white water kayaking (not that I’ve ever done it!)… You prepare carefully and meticulously, then launch into the rapids and go with the flow.

The most fun of the preparation has been reading up on the behavior of the animals we’ll probably see. For example, I’ve been reading about the comparative social systems of Golden Jackals and Black-Backed Jackals (coyote-like canids, common in both Kenya and Botswana). Both form strong pair bonds (I remember a great sighting we had one trip of a pair of Black-Backs doing “tandem scent marking” in which they traveled in single file, and each marking the same spot about every 50 feet.) and both are reproductively more successful if their older litters stay around as “helpers at the nest,” helping to protect and feed the next litter. But it’s more common in Goldens, even though Black Backs seems to profit most if they have helpers.

The researchers note (see Estes amazing book, The Behavior Guide to African Mammals) that Black Backs are much more aggressive to each other as they mature and tend to disperse earlier and more often. It’s unclear why, but it is clear that lions and humans are their main predators, and they need numbers to help protect the young and to protect food sources from hyenas, lions and even vultures.

Although nothing is ever for sure in Africa, we probably will see quite a few jackals, and if we are lucky, some of the harder to spot canids, like Bat Eared foxes (who are terminally adorable). Whether we see African Wild Dogs in Botswana has become quite the question: The Okavango Delta where we will be staying has been inundated with atypical flooding, and the radio-collared pack that normally dens close to where we are staying has moved and is denning elsewhere. People on the ground in Botswana are being wonderful about doing all they can to facilitate our seeing the dogs, but the fact is, the only guarantee in Africa is that there are no guarantees. I sent out an email yesterday to folks explaining the situation, and so far I’ve have gotten lovely responses from a number of folks who completely understand that wild animals are just that, and that we are but visitors into their world. Whatever happens, happens.

The only thing I am sure of on this entire trip is that it will be an amazing adventure.  I’d be stunned if we didn’t get great looks at lions (although their numbers are decreasing due to the use of poison by farmers around the parks), hyenas, and probably cheetahs. Leopards are extremely common, but their success is partially due to their skill at hiding out during the day and it is not common to see them at all. However, on my first trip we actually saw a leopard leap out of tall grasses and kill an antelope, then drag it to a tree. (That was on the way to breakfast, right outside of the lodge we were staying at. Oh my.) I can pretty well assure everyone that won’t happen again, but that something equally amazing probably will!

By the way, I MIGHT be able to get on-line and post from Africa on occasion, and I would love to be able to keep up with your comments, so keep them coming. But no promises, internet connections are tenuous at best when on safari, and you just never know. However, I have written 5 posts to appear when I’m gone, and I hope you enjoy them. Many of them have photos from previous trips to Africa, so in some ways I’ll be keeping you updated. . .

Meanwhile, back at the farm: The flowers are especially beautiful right now, in part due to an atypically cool and wet summer. It is heaven for heat-haters like me and Willie, and for crops like alfalfa and flowers like roses and bergamot. The berries just never stop, and I just can’t stop myself from making a mixed berry pie every week. Here’s berries in the bowl, with Tapioca and sugar, waiting to be dished into the pie shell. (And oh yeah, it’s long gone by now!) No more pies for awhile, but the food on safari is absurd… the tent camps (do not think pup tent, think hardwood floors, bathrooms and gorgeous linens!) put out feasts three times a day. I expect to come back looking like a strawberry (red from sun burn and round).

And here are the ones who make it incredibly  hard to leave. Truth is, tears will flow as we drive away. I have my own version of separation anxiety when I leave the farm and the dogs. Once I’m on the plane I’m okay, but the first fifteen minutes is just awful. It gets bad again after about a week… no matter how wonderful it is I will start yearning for Will and Lassie. I’ll miss Sushi too, but to be honest, it’s not the same as missing my dogs. I feel guilty saying that, but I suspect Sushi would say the same thing; she’ll miss us, but nothing like Lassie and Will.

Do not think the dog’s postures in the photo below suggest that they know I’m leaving and are sad. There’s no question Lassie knows I’m leaving soon on a trip, but in this case they were just bored to tears with me trying to get a picture! But foolish as it is, I can’t stop myself from telling them (as if they read the blog!):

Be safe my friends, I’ll miss you more than I can say.