The African Wild Dog : Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation

With only 5000 surviving, the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) is one of the world's most endangered large carnivores - and one of the most remarkable.

This portrait of wild dogs incorporates scattered information with new findings from a six year study in Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve, Africa's largest protected area.

The book emphasizes ecology, concentrating on why wild dogs fare poorly in protected areas that maintain healthy populations of lions, hyenas, or other top carnivores.

In addition to conservation issues it covers aspects of wild dog behaviour and social evolution.

The autohrs use demographic, behavioural, endrocrine and genetic approaches to examine how and why nonbreeding pack mates help breeding pairs raise their litters.

They also present the laregest data set collected on mammalian predator-prey interactions and the evolution of co-operative hunting, allowing them to account for wild dogs' prowess as hunters.