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While visiting the Pittsburgh Zoo, a two-year-old child toppled into the African Painted Dog exhibit. In minutes, the boy was dead. No one denies the tragedy, but many have criticized that neither mother, bystanders, nor zoo personnel jumped in after the child. And though I understand the sentiment, I don’t think people know a whole lot about African painted dogs.

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A Note On Zoos

The African painted dog may look similar enough to the tuft-tailed mutt you grew up with, but I promise you, this canine doesn’t wear Christmas sweaters. Alternately called the African wild dog, Cape hunting dog, ornate wolf and about half a dozen other combinations of those words, Lycaon pictus is more formidable than its big ears and calico coat let on.

And no matter what the hypothetical He-Men spout from the safety of ergonomic office chairs, the facts show a single African painted dog would give an adult human a run for his money. The Pittsburgh Zoo exhibit featured 11 of them.

In the next section, we’ll talk about why jumping into that roiling mess of fur and teeth is zoo-assisted suicide. But first, I want to confront a sad fact about any animal attack – the knee-jerk response to simply kill them all. In fact, these creatures aren’t very popular animals in Africa either. They’ve long been known as “the devil’s dogs” and in many places it’s common practice to shoot them on sight.

Is it that they remind us of what our Pomeranians and Poodles once were, animals with no regard for our laps, no desire to sit patiently while we place edibles on their obedient heads? Or simply that human encroachment and lack of habitat have forced many a wild dog to bring down livestock – a no-no with the human race since the early days of animal husbandry?

An accident leads to a death and too often we react with only revulsion and fear, and I think that’s a mistake. I mean, isn’t this sort of why we have zoos in the first place? To show our children the animals of the world and get them excited about nature, distorted though it may appear through glass and iron bar? Might we assume this is precisely what that little boy and his mother were doing just moments before the heartbreaking accident?

Of course, I don’t expect the victim’s family to look upon painted dogs with awe any time soon – we’ll never know what they must be feeling right now and my heart sincerely goes out to them – but I think the rest of us have an opportunity (a responsibility?) to take a closer look at this extraordinary animal, one that is both ruthless in its fight for survival, but also remarkably social, communal and downright peaceful in regards to pack hierarchy and transfer of power.

8 Reasons You Don’t Want to Jump in a Painted Dog Pit

Let’s start by dispelling the warm feeling you might have about jumping 14 ft into a wild dog enclosure to save another human being. I mean, it’s big of you, but unrealistic.

There’s a reason the zoo personnel didn’t just hop down there. And while they won’t return my calls, below are some reasons why doing so would likely have been disastrous, even for a few fully grown men. Just thank the gods most of us will never be put to such a test.

1.)  African painted dogs have the highest Bite Force Quotient (BFQ) of all living Carnivora. That means they can out-chomp grizzly bears, Bengal tigers, honey badgers and hyenas. To best the painted ones, you’d have to resurrect a dire wolf. (Which would be awesome. But messy.)

2.)  Painted dogs have larger premolars than other canids. Like beanstalk giants, they use these teeth to grind bones, which they then eat, presumably without baking them into bread.

3.)  On the business end of those powerful jaws, single-cusped carnassials enable them to shear flesh faster than you can curl a ribbon with scissors.

4.)  Did I mention this maw is flying toward you at 37 mph? African painted dogs are cursorial predators. (The Boss knows what I’m talking about.)

5.)  And it’s not just one mouth you must evade. Typical packs range from 10-20 dogs. In their natural environment, the pack gives chase for up to 3.5 miles, with reinforcements replacing the lead chasers as they tire. Flankers cut off escape to the right or left, so zigging and zagging are futile.

6.)  A single dog can bring down prey as big as a male Grant’s gazelle – 110 to 180 lbs. A pack can bring down a 600 lb wildebeest or kudu. Sometimes this is done via drive-by disembowelment – ripping open an animal’s gut as it runs.

7.)  All these things combine for one of the best kill percentages on earth. Some put it as high as 80%. Lions, tigers and bears – and virtually every other predator – pale in comparison.

8.)  Once the prey is down, many animals must take a moment to compose themselves. For instance, Cheetahs pant to lower their body temperature. Painted dogs however are adapted to withstand high body temperatures and immediately set to devouring their kill before hyenas or lions can steal it. (Those big ears also help for heat regulation.)

All of which is to say, hope of saving the child likely disappeared the moment he hit the ground. Or as Jack Hanna put it, “They are one of the most aggressive predatory animals in the wild. A zookeeper, a tranquilizer gun could not have helped.”

The Peaceful Side of African Painted Dogs

African painted dog packs are excellent parents. Once pups are old enough to accompany the pack to a kill, they are given first dibs on the meal. This is rather atypical among pack predators. More often it’s the alpha males and females who take the best bits and let everyone else battle over scraps. Not so with the painted dogs. Even the alpha pair will wait until the pups have had their fill. After that, everyone eats more or less according to rank and there’s very little fighting.

Furthermore, when either member of an alpha pair die, the pack splits up into single sex adult groups, with a male from the youngest sexually mature cohort accepting alpha dog status of the male group. This is dissolution is called pack fission and allows for a peaceful transition of power while also diversifying the gene pool. Roger Burrows, of AfricanWildDogWatch.org, has a whole paper on what happens in any given situation, but here are a few notes that highlight the crazy inverted, anti-Ayn Rand hierarchy of these animals:

• Any time alpha male status is transferred, the former alpha remains in the pack peacefully
• Alpha females retain their status for life
• If the group finds orphaned males, they will adopt them. Once the orphans are sexually mature, one of them will assume control of his foster pack as alpha – again, all of this without any violence
• If two breeding pairs have pups in the same season, the subordinate pups have priority over the alpha pups at kills

In other words, African painted dogs live by a code that’s basically the opposite of everything you know about capitalism, “the law of the jungle” and your high school cafeteria.

African Painted Dogs Are Not Evil

Because I just spent half an article explaining why African painted dogs are lithe and lean vehicles for unrepentant death, I feel the need to close on a more measured note.

African painted dogs are not evil. They are animals. They do what they’re built to do – eat, reproduce, survive. Being particularly good at those things should earn them respect from us, not vitriol.

But even I admit, watching them hunt is an exercise in detachment.

WARNING: The following video is rather graphic. It shows African wild dogs hunting and disemboweling a kudu while it’s still alive. If you decide to watch, remember things like the dogs’ exceptional bite force quotient, the internal hierarchy that allows them to work together so effectively, and the miles of pursuit that likely took place before this final, exhausted scene.

In other words, trade your fear for awe and step inside the Thunderdome. (And if you’re not up for that, here’s a video of African painted dogs killing a Christmas tree.)

Images courtesy of: Warthog, Johan Hoekstra, Chris Johns, Dog Law Reporter,  and the talented Monica McClain

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