Dhole! Part 3 of Ten Days in Tadoba

Dhole

So there we were, at the end of Part 2, watching Maya and her three cubs cooling off in a shady pool during the afternoon heat. The German family who were also staying at the Lodge were in the next jeep and we were sharing what we had done that day. They asked me if I had seen the dhole.

I should explain at this point that dhole have always held a special fascination for me. I came across them in Rudyard Kipling's short story "Red Dog" which is in the Second Jungle Book collection. In that story they are depicted as the very worst kind of villain, a contagion that sweeps through the jungle, killing indiscriminately.  In later years I took the trouble to find more about these fascinating canids. To many Westerners, their deep red colour is reminiscent of our native red fox; but a dhole is no mere fox. Their large feet allow them to run down large fast prey and their impressive teeth will chew through tough hides and thick tendons. They are ferocious and resolute predators. Yet, for all their impressive dental armoury and voracious habits, they are not habitually aggressive to each other. They live in large packs based on extended families and all the adults care for the pups and young dogs. They communicate with a variety of whistles, clucks, yaps and whimpers. Their close familial relationships allow them to hunt large prey like chital and even the mighty gaur by coordinating their attack, chasing the panicked prey until it is weakened and can be pulled down. They are not really 'like' any other dog, although they are similar in their habits and social structure to African hunting dogs.

 

Long canines and huge shearing carnassial teeth - definitely not a fox!

We left Maya (it took me a while to convince my team that I really did want to forsake the longed-for tiger in favour of the dhole) and found them about twenty minutes later in the deep shade of some tall trees next to a stream, curled up in the leaf litter. There were eight adults and four pups. The pups were boisterous and kept annoying the adults; leaping on them, licking their faces, rubbing alongside them, whining and whimpering querulously. 

The dogs were constantly getting up, pattering about before lying down and resting again.

A puppy is greeted by two resting adults that it just woke up.

Red dog in the shade

As the afternoon was getting on the pack soon started to move up towards the road: it was time to be on the move, it was time to hunt. They walked off down the road, allowing us to follow closely. The puppies played with the adults, demanding attention. Both pups and adults continued to play together, yawning, grinning and tumbling in the dust beside the road, as they began to spread out down the road. 

A male and female rub up against one another, affirming social bonds.

The time to move. The time to hunt.

Then the adults began to whistle to each other. Although it was a soft sound like the squeal of bicycle brakes, it made their heads snap up and their attitude changed. Sharp muzzles were raised, large triangular ears pricked up and they started to move away from the river, breaking into an easy trot. We lost them as they moved into the tall grass and weeds beside the road. Our jeeps turned round in the road, dust rising from the gravel as we sped round to meet them on a road higher up the valley side. We arrived just in time to see them appear on the tarmac, emerging suddenly from the scrub. They travelled down that road for another half hour before taking to the jungle and disappearing.

Trotting down the road

That was not my last encounter with the dhole. On my fifth morning at Tadoba, we arrived at the gate at six o’clock in the morning. The light was dawn-grey and the Forest Guards were still busy washing and dressing after being asleep on the office roof or on machans (raised platforms) in the jungle. Across the dry paddy fields three slim shapes slipped over a bank and began to cut towards us.

“Dhole!” said a guide, pointing.

They were trotting in line, dust kicking up from their feet as they moved round behind us. Two more adults and three pups joined them and they all advanced towards the gate, passing close by and then stopping on the road.

Paperwork was being hurried up and got completed magically so that Guides could tumble into the jeeps as the gate swung wide and we drove up the road. We entered the Park with an honour guard of dhole trotting beside us. One of the pups was carrying a stick in his mouth, a small trophy that he was keen to show off but which all the others studiously ignored. Every few yards one of them would stop to scent mark a tree or leave a scat at the side of the road. They were a dawn patrol, travelling their territorial boundary, making sure that the neighbours knew to keep in their own space. Dhole are jealous of their jungle. They do not tolerate competition and goes for predators other than dhole. Tadoba’s tigress superstar Maya lost her first litter of cubs to dhole. They found and killed her two cubs. I waved to them as we turned to go into the middle of the Park and they carried on to probe the boundaries where the jungle meets the farmland.

Encounters with dhole are always on their terms. You can’t create an encounter, they just appear beside you. They let you get as close as they want and then move off when it suits them. You are not relevant to them. Their priorities are so utterly different to our own; there is nothing about us that would engage their interest.

Dhole are very beautiful: handsome in a way that many other canids are not.

On my ninth day at Tadoba, we were sitting in a small line of jeeps, listening for alarm calls. We were situated on a minor forest road just where it joined a larger road that skirted a large open area.

A good place to wait, watch and listen.

The high-pitched “POW!” alarm call of a chital from nearby in the dense bamboo scrub jolted everyone to full alertness as if a switch had been flicked on. More alarm calls sounded out as a small herd of the spotted deer walked past, scuffing through the crispy bamboo leaves that covered the ground. I heard something running towards us through the thicket, coming straight for us. I stood quickly, positioned the foot of my monopod securely on the side of the jeep and centered my weight so that I was balanced. Whatever it was, it was moving faster as it approached the edge of the thicket and I swung the lens to meet it. Chital burst out of the jungle, pouring like fluid from a tap they leapt across the track in front of us and bounded out across the grassland beyond it.

“Dhole”, grunted Lohoo my driver. “They run from the dhole.”

There was another star-burst of chital further up the track, some of them galloping down the track past our jeep, jinking and swerving, mouths gaping, eyes rolling: obviously terrified.

A pack of dhole were working this section of jungle. Spread out through the dense scrub, communicating with their quiet whistle, the pack was like a trawl that scours the sea bed catching everything in front of it. The deer were running, trying to get around the side of the pack before they were chased by one dog only to run in front of another. Two dogs came around the corner of the track, swinging along in a mile-eating trot, heads down, looking neither right nor left. I’ve seen fox hounds do the same thing. They are concentrating on what they can hear, rather than what they can see or smell, taking cues from their pack-mates who are in close contact with the quarry. Suddenly, their heads snapped up and they lunged off the track and dived into the scrub. Sambar honked in alarm and we could hear the sounds fade quickly, swallowed up by the jungle as the drama unfolded deep in the forest.

My last sighting of dhole was a single male. He was walking across the road, distended belly showing that his hunting had been good. His coat shone a deep red in the evening light. He paused to give us a long, slow appraisal. Then he turned aside, ears pricked to calls we could not hear. He walked into the jungle, answering a summons that was for him alone.

Belly distended with a large meal, this was my last view of dhole.