How to see African wild dogs in the wild

Yip, yip, hooray: conservation teams across Africa are working to bring African wild dog populations back, and tourist interest can help.

Gently lifting their bodies by the fore and hind legs, conservation workers brush unconscious animals against each other and set them back down. You can’t just let sleeping dogs lie.

These aren’t just any dogs: these are rare African wild dogs being transported by plane to set up a new pack in Liwonde National Park. They’ve been near-absent from Malawi for 70 years.

They will wake up soon, and if they smell like each other, they are more likely to form a pack together – hence the brushing. A new pack is sorely needed. These are one of the rarest carnivores in Africa, and there are less than 7,000 left in the wild. That’s up from a low of around 5,500 – roughly the same number as remaining tigers.

“You don’t realise how cool they are until you see them,” says Joshua Flatman, founder of specialist safari company Faran Travel. He runs our tailor made trips to wild dog hotspots like the Okavango Delta and Zambia’s Luangwa Valley. He finds that travellers don’t know what they are: “When they hear the name, people think they are just feral domesticated dogs.”

African wild dogs are unrelated to domestic dogs (they have four toes; dogs have five). They are also called painted wolves or Cape hunting dogs. For a while they were classified as hyenas, but they are unrelated. Their Latin name is Lycaon pictus – painted wolf – and they were once so common across Africa that Akagera National Park in Rwanda was called Parc Aux Lycaons. The last one vanished from the park in the 1980s. Their many names and history of bungled classifications perhaps factors into why people don’t think about seeing them.

And their many names are just part of their plurality. You never see just one wild dog – they are pack animals, and before their decline were known to exist in packs a hundred strong. They don’t confine themselves to one park but have territories that span habitats and cross international borders; packs have been known to have a range of nearly 1,500km. Their beautiful, mottled fur blends them into their environment – yet every patterned coat is unique. They often move and can’t be found in the same place as they were the month, week or day before.

How do you keep track of such an elusive animal, when a single tracking collar can cost $800? By monitoring them every single day of the year for 16 years straight. That’s the approach of Wildlife ACT. They run our endangered wildlife conservation holidays in South Africa, where there are around 550 wild dogs left.

Bronwen Kelly is reservations manager at Wildlife ACT, who work in conjunction with WWF and the Wildlands Conservation Trust. “The very nature of the African wild dog is what puts them at risk, as a species,” she says. “Their tenacity, intelligence, loyalty to the pack, and sheer single-mindedness can result in their demise if they are not observed every day.”

Those who work with African wild dogs are never short of words to describe them. African wild dogs have complex lives, existing in hierarchies ruled by an alpha female. They mourn their dead. They protect their wounded. They greet each other each morning. They vote for new leaders and whether to hunt each day. All members of the pack – male and female – are involved in raising, feeding and protecting their young. They make a cacophony of noises – chirps, yelps, sneezes, whoops.

“They’re one of the animals that’s actually entertaining – they’re always chirruping to each other, moving around,” says Joshua. “They can hunt throughout the day. The chance of them catching something is actually really high – so they’re great if you want to see something hunt.”

Wild dogs have one of the greatest success rates of any predator, catching their prey 80 percent of the time, giving them 60 percentage points on lions.

Our travellers love seeing African wild dogs, sometimes counting them alongside the so-called ‘Big Five’ as an unofficial sixth member. Simon Mills is founder of our partner Native Escapes. “I’ve seen them in the Kruger area, in Hwange and in Mana Pools in Zimbabwe,” he says, “and they are exceptional. They are great fun to see around. They are very fast-moving and very active, and they’re playful like normal dogs. The difference between them and, say, big cats is that in the heat of the day the cats sit under the trees, but the dogs are continually active.”

Our traveller Sue Shearman loved seeing wild dog puppies “who really wanted to jump onto the back of the truck!” on our conservation holiday in Kruger National Park. And our old colleague Anna Rice has talked about her own emotional journey to see wild dogs in Selous Game Reserve, where there were thought to be 800 left – the most in Tanzania. “Observing the tight bonds of the pack in action – witnessing their intelligence and their playfulness – felt like such a privilege,” she writes.

My own family had a great experience following wild dogs by car this year in Nxai Pan National Park, Botswana. My mum was lucky enough to witness them on a hunt: “We found the pack at about 4pm and they were all resting,” she says. “Now and again, one would stand up and wander around, but they weren’t doing much.

“Our guide told us, ‘If you wait, at 5pm they will go and hunt.’ We waited and, sure enough, at 5pm they started sniffing around and set off.

“But they didn’t go together – they fanned out. You could see them spread out, running, and then they would all home in on an animal. They seemed separate but they were all working as a team. It was very nice to watch animal behaviour in action.”

It’s tourist encounters like these that can help the wild dog survive. Wild dogs were once seen as pests. But tourist interest in a species can massively increase its chance of protection.

In the early 2000s, northern Botswana, Selous Game Reserve and Kruger National Park were once home to a third of all the wild dogs that remained in the world. Botswana’s protection of its wild dogs has been crucial for the survival of the species, and there are now 131 packs in the country. Try Moremi Game Reserve, which protects 40 percent of the Okavango Delta, and Chobe National Park. Then there’s the Kwando-Linyanti Area, where a camp on the Kwando River has its own resident pack of wild dogs who regularly den nearby.

There are thought to be around 400 wild dogs in Zambia, many of them in the Luangwa Valley. You’ll have a better chance of seeing them in South Luangwa National Park than in many other places in Africa – try our Zambia wildlife safari holiday, which also visits another dog spot: Kafue National Park.

In the 2000s, Kruger National Park in South Africa had only around 100 dogs. Now there are 550 dogs running free in the national park, and populations are carefully managed in small reserves. You might also see them in private game reserves near Kruger, such as on our Kruger Park reserves safari.

It’s Nyerere National Park, not the Serengeti, that you’ll want if you’re visiting Tanzania. It’s a wild dog stronghold, considered one of the finest places in Africa to see them. There are also wild dogs in Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Loliondo, but why they’ve failed to thrive in the Serengeti, from where they disappeared in the 1990s, is unknown.

Only three other countries in Africa have ‘viable’ populations of African wild dogs: Mozambique, Namibia and Kenya. The best place to see them in Kenya is the Laikipia Plateau. If you're a rider, try this Kenya riding safari, which crosses their territory. Mozambique’s Niassa Special Reserve, one of the largest protected areas in Africa, is connected to Nyerere (Selous), and has around 450 wild dogs. There are also wild dogs in other areas of the country, like Limpopo, and they’ve been reintroduced in Gorongosa National Park. In Namibia, there are thought to be around 550 African wild dogs, but reintroduction to Etosha National Park, the country’s best known safari destination, failed – it’s thought because of the resident lion population. Malawi, where this article began, is attempting to establish a resident population in Liwonde National Park – whether they flourish remains to be seen.