Methods
Dholes
The general idea was to use a “hunting dog” dummy to trigger attacking behaviour in the test animals. Dummies were presented to one group of wolves (Moody, Ludo, Dobby and Snipe). Dobby and Snipe had to be put down during the study for different reasons. One group of African wild dogs (19 individuals) and a group of dholes (13 individuals) was tested as well. All animals resided in the Kolmården Wildlife Park, Sweden.
In case of the wolves the dummy was dragged behind a car. The dummy for the wild dogs was attached to a cable car and the one for the dholes simply thrown into the enclosure, attached to a rope, and then pulled manually.
Five different deterrents were tested. The first two were physical deterrents based on the “hedgehog principle” with either screws or steel spikes mounted on the back of the dummy. The next two deterrents were using ultrasound (Dazer, transmitting a 26 kHz tone, source level 75 dB re 20µPa rms @ 1m). The first ultrasound was only activated during the bite into the dummy, whereas in later trials the ultrasound stayed on for 19 seconds after each bite. These deterrents were only tested on the wolves. With the last set-up the animals received an electric shock when biting the dummy. This deterrent was tested on all three species.
All tests were video taped and later analyzed for the behavior reaction of the animals towards the different deterrents.
African wild dogs
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Director of undergraduate studies Biology
Last updated:
05/18/10