MOMBO CAMP UNUSUAL SIGHTINGS MARCH 2010

Location: Mombo Camp, Okavango Delta, Botswana

Date: March 2010

Observer: The Mombo Team

Photographer: Russel Friedman

The African wild dog is an endangered carnivore that is perhaps best known for its social nature. It is this aspect that is seen as being at the heart of its success as a highly efficient predator of medium-sized antelope. Essentially mixed-sex packs operate in an orchestrated and cohesive way to bring down prey at far higher success rates than predators such as lion.

So what happens when this social component is removed?

The situation at Mombo provides some fascinating insight into this. In the 1990s, Mombo was renowned as an area of unusually high wild dog density. This has all changed and the area is now well known for its very high numbers of lions. This high lion density has kept wild dog numbers very low. In fact over the past two or three years only one very small wild dog pack has managed to exist in the area. There were also visits from larger packs but these have been only of a very short duration.

The aforementioned small pack saw a gradual diminishing of its numbers until at some stage in early 2009 only one animal remained - an adult female. It was presumed that this animal would either emigrate to join dispersing animals and form a new pack or, more likely, would perish in the hostile environment, unable to hunt efficiently on her own and even less likely to protect a successful kill from large scavenging predators.

We have all been proven wrong and this single wild dog has thrived in Mombo's prey-rich environment. She has done it with help from some highly unusual and totally unexpected quarters.

For the past six months or so this single wild dog has sought out the company of black-backed jackals and spotted hyaenas in an area north of Mombo Camp and has been seen associating with both species and even touching noses with the larger hyaenas with whom she seems well integrated (she reacts differently to hyaenas of different ages and genders of the local clan for example). Even more bizarre has been her behaviour where she solicits adult black-backed jackals to follow her on the hunt and even regurgitates meat on her return for the growing jackal pups!

Unsurprisingly, this sort of behaviour does not seem to have been recorded before. This really is unusual behaviour that no-one can have predicted. And it adds a whole new dimension to game viewing at Mombo.