African Wild Dog (Lycaon Pictus)
Or Painted Dog, or Painted Hunting Dog, or Cape Dog, or Cyhyene, or Loup-Peint, or Lycaon, or even Licaon, depending on whom you are speaking to!
Your domestic dogs are distantly related to me. We are only found in Africa, especially in scrub savannah and other lightly wooded areas. Our coats are rather special; they're bespoke design, with no two individuals having the same markings.
We hunt in packs and give a mean chase, catching an amazing 85% of our targeted prey - poor deers! We do look rather vicious, so you'd have thought we'd howl like wolfs, but in fact we chirp like birds when communicating. After a successful hunt we go home and regurgitate meat for those who stayed behind on crèche duty.
We are in serious trouble though. The IUCN Red List marks us as Endangered. The current estimate of our numbers remaining in the wild is approximately 3,000. We have virtually disappeared from West Africa, and of those that remain we are found mostly in South and South-Eastern Africa, with the largest population found in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania.
Our numbers are continuing to decline because of our ongoing conflict with human activities, infectious disease, and the fragmentation of our habitat. However, the good news is that we are now a legally protected species, and when you buy an Animal Tails T-shirt part of the profits go to the AfriCat Foundation who campaign for our preservation.
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