16 November 2013 / leggypeggy

Wild dogs make an appearance in Pench National Park

dholes, dogs, India, national parks, overland travel, Pench National Park, Prayaan India Overland, safaris, travel, wild dogs, wildlife

Wild dogs flop in the grass at Pench National Park

Of the four national parks we have visited so far, Pench has given us the greatest variety of wild animals. While we didn’t see tigers or leopards there, we did feel especially lucky to see a pack of four Indian wild dogs on our second safari.

Deepti, who spends a lot of her time in and near national parks, says she’s only ever seen wild dogs once before and that was five or six years ago. This isn’t surprising—according to Anand there are only about 500 wild dogs left in India, and about half of those are in Pench.

Nope, a girl can’t have a pee in private

Known also as dholes, these wild dogs roam through South and Southeast Asia. While they look a lot like domestic dogs, dholes are more closely related to jackals than wolves.

They are classified as endangered because of reduced habitat, depleted populations of prey, competition by other predators and possibly diseases from domestic and feral dogs.

Dholes are highly social. They live in large packs, and sometimes split up to hunt. They communicate through whistles and yaps (they don’t bark), and hunt by running their quarry to exhaustion and then attacking from all sides. Interestingly, adult dholes will let the pups feed first.

The dogs we saw seemed more interested in playing and lounging around than hunting. They loped along behind our Gypsy (small safari 4WD), stopped for a not-at-all-private pee (just like us gawking at a tiger) and flopped down in the grass for a roll and a stretch. Perhaps they were having a post-lunch stroll and mini siesta before they scooted off.

I’ve read that dholes are afraid of humans, but as a pack are brazen enough to take on much larger and heavier animals such as wild boar, water buffalo and even tigers. They eat fruit and vegetable matter too.

Since Pench, we’ve visited three more national parks and had eight more safaris, but no sign of more wild dogs. Here’s a great article about the dogs being endangered.

Tomorrow we’re off to look at birds in Keoladeo National Park near Bharatpur.