KEEP WATCH A WILD-DOG DYNASTY
A new BBC documentary follows a pack of endangered wild dogs in Zimbabwe over three years, telling a dramatic tale of family, pride and rivalry, writes Paul Ash
If you are the alpha, you get most of the food and you also get to produce most of the offspring
One night the painted wolves began to sing. It was something that few people had ever heard, let alone recorded. The director fumbled for his phone, switched it on and captured one of the most haunting sounds ever to come from the African wilderness — the keening melody of a pack of wild dogs , or painted wolves as they are better known, honouring their new alpha. Those who have spent time with these animals will know the excited yipping and yelping a pack makes when they are feeding, hunting or greeting one another. But the singing? That was a revelation, not least of all for the film crew. For them it was a startling gift to mark the end of a three-year odyssey, during which they had witnessed the fall and rise of a pack of these deeply misunderstood canines.
The pack had been competing with their own kind for new territory in a sprawling wilderness on the south bank of the Zambezi River. In that time, a daughter had turned on her mother, sparking a struggle that was every bit as epic as a war between humans.
“Honestly, it was the best thing I have ever done,” said Nick Lyon, the film’s director. “Painted wolves are the least understood of the canids and we were able to almost give this species a voice.”
Indeed, they did. Read on.
WHAT IS THE FILM?
It is one episode in a new five-part BBC series called Dynasties. Filmed and produced by many of the same people who gave us Planet Earth, Dynasties takes five endangered animals — chimpanzees, lions, painted wolves, tigers and, yes, penguins — and follows the life story of a single group of these animals. The stories all share a common thread — a leader’s struggle for survival in the face of unrelenting competition from within their own groups — hence the series’ name.
Dynasties is narrated by Sir David Attenborough, now 92, who, in an interview with The Telegraph this week, remarked on the absolute tenacity shown by the crews as they filmed the series, often in horrendous conditions. One cameraman was in Antarctica for nine months filming penguins, and was there when the first chip came in the egg perched on a male penguin’s feet. “He had to be there a long time to get that,” said Attenborough. “The temptation to go for a cup of coffee must have been great but he was out there and he got it.”
The crew filming the painted wolves episode had different challenges: extreme heat, enervating humidity, punctures (22) and long days away from camp looking for the animals and seeing nothing. “On the second shoot, we had two encounters with the painted wolves the whole month,” said Lyon.
WHERE DID IT HAPPEN?
The Painted Wolves episode took nearly three years to shoot. The crew spent weeks at a time at the privately-owned Vundu Camp, which perches quietly on the banks of the Zambezi River in the Mana Pools National Park in Zimbabwe.
The park lies in the embrace of the Zambezi Escarpment, which forms a deep, wide valley through which the Zambezi rolls like a freight train. The view across the river from the camp is dominated by the mountains of the northern escarpment, which rise sheer from the valley for 2,000 feet.
Mana Pools sprawls over 219,600ha, hemmed in by the Zambezi River and the southern escarpment. Most of it is on a wide, terraced floodplain, which, when the river rises and falls after the rainy season, forms the pools for which the park is named.
Those broad, well-watered terraces in turn form a fertile habitat for dense thickets of winter thorn acacias, mahogany, fig and ebony trees in whose glades gather some of the greatest concentrations of wildlife left in Africa — elephants, eland, zebra, buffalo, kudu, and lots and lots of impala. These abundant herds in turn support the predators: lions, hyenas, leopards and, of course, the wild dogs.
WHO ARE THE STARS?
Painted Wolves is the story of a pack led by an alpha female named Tait, who has been a strong leader but whose advancing age presents an opportunity for an overthrow. The challenge comes from her own daughter, Tammy,
who also leads a pack on the floodplain. It’s a story about the lives of animals and what it means to be, literally, the top dog.
“If you are the alpha, you get most of the food and you also get to produce most of the offspring,” said Mike Gunton, creative director of the BBC’s natural history unit.
While the stories are about families, the producers have been very careful to avoid anthropomorphising the animals. While many are named — the chimpanzee facing a challenge to his reign is David and there is Tait and her pack — those names come from people, such as trackers and scientists who have been studying them, sometimes for years.
“Often it’s shorthand for the scientists,” said Gunton. “One might say ‘David did this today,’ and another would say ‘Oh, David, he always does that’.”
Supporting roles are filled by other animals such as Boswell, a big but gentle tusker who roams Mana Pools with his fellow elephants and who has learnt to stand on his hind legs to reach the succulent greenery that others in his herd cannot.
Then there are the lions and hyenas — sworn enemies to the painted wolves and each other — whose appearances in the film are an often violent reminder that life in the wild is hard and brutal, even for predators.
There are antelope too — wide-eyed waterbuck, skittish zebras and twitchy impalas. And always, somewhere in the distance, the grunting and splashing of hippos engrossed in their own watery struggles.
ARE THERE ANY HUMANS?
You wont’ see any people in the films and David Attenborough’s voice is the only one you’ll hear — and even he wanted the narration kept to an absolute minimum — but the series would have been impossible to make without the scientists and game rangers and wildlife experts.
In Mana Pools National Park, those people are Nick and Desiree Murray, Vundu Camp’s owners; and head ranger Henry Bandure, who has worked at the camp for the past six years. The Murrays have been leading walking and canoe safaris in the park since the early ’90s, and their lives are intertwined with the painted wolves.
The dogs trust Murray, a leading expert on the canids. “My kids have crawled up to them on their bellies since they were three years old,” he said.
Bandure fell in love with the painted wolves when he arrived in Mana Pools in 1997. Since then he has seen things that have never been documented.
“Once we spent a night out there with 30 dogs and 12 hyenas, sleeping next to each other then attacking each other. When the dogs left, the hyenas picked up the dog poo. Maybe it was like a chocolate mousse for them.”
Perhaps the best experience of all is Nick Lyon’s. As he sat outside the den one day, hoping to film the puppies, Tait and the pack left to go hunting.
“They always leave a babysitter but I couldn’t see it,” said Lyon.
When he moved position to see if he could spot it, the two puppies came crawling out of the den.
“That’s when I realised Tait had left us as the babysitters. We went ‘shh-shh’ and made pushing motions until the pups went back into the den. It took things to a whole new level.”
Ash was a guest of BBC Earth.
Listen to our podcast about Dynasties at timeslive.co.za/group/Travel—Podcast