Dancing with wolves
The animal also known as a wild dog would like you to know that it prefers to be called a painted wolf. Also, it would like more attention. Claire Keeton spoke to the photographer who helped bring these endearing endangered animals into our homes
It is part of the ethos of documentary and wildlife photographers to observe and not intervene. But faced with a situation in which they could save the life of a person or animal, many of them have broken this rule. Take Nick Dyer, for example — he did not intend to shout at the lions that attacked the fluffy painted wolf cubs whose life stories he had been recording for months, but he couldn’t help himself.
“The shout was totally involuntary,” he said. “I was madly in love with the pups and didn’t want anything to happen to them. I had spent a lot of time with them since they were about four months old.”
The pups’ mother, known as Blacktip, was the matriarch of one of three painted wolf packs that Dyer followed on foot for six years in Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools National Park.
The species is more commonly known as the wild dog or painted dog, but conservationists prefer “painted wolf”, the direct translation of its scientific name, Lycaon pictus.
Blacktip’s nine puppies had previously fed at their den on regurgitated food, as is normal. The first time she took them out to feed at a kill, three lions saw an opportunity and moved in, but they underestimated the man with a camera standing nearby.
Dyer’s impulsive shout distracted the lions but then they turned their attention to him instead.
“The lions came in for the charge, full of adrenaline,” Dyer said. “One lioness dropped into a crouch and turned on me, snarling and growling. I bellowed, ‘Back off!’ and she ran off to the side … I spoke to her soothingly and she calmed down. The last thing I could do was run. I would not have survived.”
Camping in a tent on the banks of the Zambezi River, Dyer spent up to six months at a time with the painted wolves. He went alone, to make it easier to get close-up-and-personal portraits.
“When I first went out I was terrified,” he said. But the painted wolves got used to him and began to tolerate his presence. “Painted wolves are very endearing. The pups are everything to them.”
The painted wolf is the only surviving species in the genus Lycaon, which is neither dog nor wolf.
“Wolves and domestic dogs belong to the Canis group and can mate together,” Dyer said. “But this does not apply to the painted wolf.”
A century ago, half-a-million painted wolves roamed Sub-Saharan Africa, but that number has plummeted to roughly 6,500. Shrinking habitat, persecution, snaring, disease and road accidents have hammered the population.
It is the only predator that allows its pups to feed first. Often the alpha female, the only one in the pack to breed, will eat last.
“The pups are hilarious,” said Dyer. “They have so much fun playing games, biting and tackling each other. More fun than World Cup rugby. They would look at me as if to say: ‘Do you want to join in?’ ”
Dyer bonded with three packs, one led by an alpha female given the name Tait, the other two led by her daughters, Blacktip and Tammy. Tait and Blacktip were made famous last year in David Attenborough’s BBC documentary series Dynasties.
Baboons for breakfast
Survival is a daily struggle for this highly social animal, despite it being Africa’s most efficient predator. About 80% of hunts end in a kill, a rate roughly twice better than for lions, and they never kill wantonly. The Mana Pools packs have even been observed hunting baboons, a dangerous foe that can inflict severe wounds.
“Wild dogs predating on any primate has never been seen anywhere else,” said Dyer. “Blacktip’s puppies were trained to chase baboons as they got bigger. Eventually they killed one and got a taste for it. This coincided with the baboon population exploding and they became regular baboon hunters."
His image of pups with a baboon head won him a “highly commended” rating in the London Natural History Museum’s wildlife photography awards last year. Dyer’s arresting photographs are the result of constant slogging and always being primed to jump up and wear out yet more shoe leather.
“The pack will be sitting under a tree and then suddenly they are up to hunt,” said Dyer of a photo he took of them on the prowl.
“I am not too close behind them when they start charging. Sometimes they move in a straight line, sometimes the impala will double back. It is pandemonium and I have almost been knocked over.”
Concentrating on trailing the pack with his lens, Dyer has to remember to look out for his own safety. “Often I turn to my left or my right and hyenas are virtually next to me.”
The pack will change direction if they detect lions, their arch-enemies. Hyenas, who follow the pack in hopes of scavenging a carcass or catching a pup unattended, also pose a threat.
The Dynasties episode, and Painted Wolves: A Wild Dog’s Life, a coffee-table book Dyer co-authored with fellow conservationist Peter Blinston, tell poignant tales of how pack members succumbed to these predators.
One night Dyer was in his tent under the stars, thinking it safe to settle down because research indicated that wild dogs hunt only at dawn, dusk and in bright moonlight, when he heard the canary-like twittering that the dogs make when excited by a hunt.
“They were in camp and had just killed an impala,” said Dyer. “They are always doing the unexpected.”
The dogs are as unpredictable as days in the bush: calm one minute, chaos the next.
“I always have my eyes open but you can come around the corner and find something unexpected,” said Dyer. “But I don’t see what I’m doing as an adrenaline sport. I very much respect the wildlife.”
Mock charges by elephants are expected but his most tense standoff was with a lone bull buffalo. “They do not mock charge. They charge. I ran up the hill. It stopped and stared, then ran the other way.”
Dyer never tried to sneak up on a pack — apart from anything else, the animals’ hearing is as acute as their oversize ears would suggest — but he signalled his approach by shooting frames with his camera so the dogs heard the click of the shutter.
“Then I’d say: ‘Hi dogs, how’s it going?’ They all knew when I was there. We had a lot of eye contact going on, one-to-one connections. You can recognise their characters. If they barked and did not want me around, or they walked away, I would not follow them.”
When Tammy had her first litter, Dyer stayed far back until the puppies were big enough and adventurous enough to leave the den and allow the pack to resume its nomadic existence.
Puppies have a 50-50 chance of survival. Out of Tammy’s seven pups, only one survived the first year. Called Ruby by the humans, this lone pup received extra attention from the adults, which played with her as her siblings would have. No pups from Tammy’s second litter of five survived and Ruby was missing by the time Dyer returned to the Mana Pools floodplains after the next rains.
A puppy named Atten by a Zimbabwean tracker, Thomas Mutonhori, was the only survivor of Tammy’s third litter (again of seven).
By then her pack was down to half its strength and Dyer — who went back to the bush this week — now tracks the new packs that have formed from their descendants.
Partners in a good cause
Blinston, who founded the Painted Wolf Foundation with Dyer, has been studying the species for 20 years in Hwange National Park. Foundation staff work with local communities who will consult them if there are issues such as dogs making a den too near a village.
On one occasion they transported a family of the animals to the middle of Hwange, “but they went straight back to the village”, said Dyer. “So the den was dug up again and put into rehab and then they were flown to Mana Pools. Genetically it is great to have new blood there.”
Based in Harare, Dyer runs high-end safaris to raise money for painted wolf conservation — it is the most endangered species among those whose numbers are known — and to finance the time he spends with them.
“I am most happy in a small tent, 5m from the banks of the Zambezi River,” he said. “They have taken me over and won’t let me go.”