Nieuwe pagina 1

Dhole

The Social Life of the Dhole

In the jungles of south and southeast Asia there lives a little known member of the dog family, which has been described as the "red dog" in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. The "red dog", the dhole, or the Asiatic wild dog (Cuon alpinus), is an animal which lives in packs. According to Kipling, it was so feared that even the wolf pack featured in the story had to move out of an area invaded by a dhole pack. Of course in most parts of Asia, wolf and dhole packs do not live together and therefore the encounter was purely fictional. Dhole packs are feared by many inhabitants of the jungle, including spotted and sambar deer, which they prey upon. Even the big cats of the Asian jungles, the leopard and the tiger, will avoid contact with a dhole pack.

Our research on the dhole, carried out in the Mudumalai wildlife sanctuary, south India, has uncovered fascinating details of the social life of these animals. Members in dhole packs display a great deal of care for each other and cooperate while performing certain tasks such as hunting prey and taking care of young. Even individuals who are not the parents of young help take care of them.

I recorded an interesting example of how the dhole cooperate in my field notebook:

"We had not located the pups for three full days after we watched [the parents] move the pups away from the Jaidev Avenue den. On the fourth day we suddenly came across two dholes chasing peacocks on the Moyar road. We watched them for a while and then tried following them. They led us to a culvert by the road side and sensing our presence stopped abruptly and began watching us. Were the pups temporarily kept in the culvert? We then decided to go away and stalk them from another side. After doing this we were treated with the view of the mother entering the culvert and emerging with a tiny pup in her mouth. She disappeared into the bush on the side of the road. After a while another dhole, a one year old female who was the elder daughter of the present mother. She also went inside the culvert and re-emerged with another pup. She disappeared, and re-appeared twice more to carry away the two remaining pups. That evening we found the pack and the pups at one of their regular dens a mile away.