Photo Fact: African Wild Dog

Today’s photo fact is about the African Wild Dog which, as its name suggests, only occurs in Africa. It is an endangered species, with under 6000 left.

African Wild Dogs

Wild dogs can’t kill animals in the same way as the big cats. Their front legs aren’t as strong and their claws are blunt as they don’t retract like on a cat. Therefore they can’t grab an animal to deliver a killer bite in the neck. Instead dogs tend to chase their victim to exhaustion when they can kill them more easily. With smaller prey they will grab it and vigorously shake it side to side, usually breaking the animal’s neck or back.

For more carnivores and facts, visit our Carnivores gallery on Flickr.

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 and is filed under Photo Fact. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
«
»

2 Responses to “Photo Fact: African Wild Dog”

  1. Ateeq Ahmad
    March 4th, 2010 at 17:39

    Very nice facts about wild dogs. They do have a very interesting and communal family structure with only a few breeding pairs. Perhaps, you should write about that too…

    [Reply]

  2. Laurens
    March 5th, 2010 at 07:34

    Thanks Ateeq. I have a few more Wild Dog photos with facts coming up, and I will definitely do a Wild Dog article in the future, as they are fascinating animals.

    [Reply]

Leave a Reply

We use a whole host of cool plugins for this site, including the NextGEN Galleries. Find them all here