African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) At full stride, an uncropped photo at dusk, when the pack in South Africa comes alive from a day of rest and weaves through the bush at full tilt, like a sudden breeze that surrounds you and then slips through the trees to disappear in the blink of an eye.
They run at 65 km/hr to exhaust their prey, and they rarely fail (with a 90% success rate versus 30% for lions). They just keep running until the prey is caught.
No two have the same coat pattern. The tail serves as a flag so each can keep a peripheral view of the rest of the pack in the tall grass.
Date 6 July 2011, 07:35
Source Painted Wolf in the Hunt
Author Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA https://www.flickr.com/people/44124348109@N01
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Painted_Wolf_in_the_Hunt_(6753102571).jpg
The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), also known as African hunting dog, African painted dog, Cape hunting dog or painted wolf, is a canid native to Sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest of its family in Africa, and the only extant member of the genus Lycaon, which is distinguished from Canis by its fewer toes and its dentition, which is highly specialised for a hypercarnivorous diet. The African wild dog is a highly social animal, living in packs with separate dominance hierarchies for males and females. Uniquely among social carnivores, it is the females rather than the males that scatter from the natal pack once sexually mature, and the young are allowed to feed first on carcasses.
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Caniformia
Family: Canidae
Genus: Lycaon
Species: Lycaon pictus (Temminck, 1820)