Forest dog
| Forest dog | ||||||||||||
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Forest dog in the Prague zoo |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Speothos | ||||||||||||
| Lund , 1839 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Speothos venaticus | ||||||||||||
| Lund , 1842 |
The forest dog ( Speothos venaticus ) is a South American wild dog with a stocky body and short legs. Outwardly, it looks more like a marten than a dog.
Appearance
The forest dog is a small wild dog with a head-torso length of 73 to 74 cm and a weight of 4 to 7 kg. It has an elongated body like a fox , a head reminiscent of a marten, small, round ears, broad paws and a short tail (10 to 15 cm). The feet are webbed , which makes walking on swampy ground easier. The fur is colored light to dark brown depending on the subspecies. The areas of fur on the neck and ears are the lightest, and the legs are darkest. Young forest dogs are solid black.
distribution
The distribution area includes the northern half of South America east of the Andes. It ranges from Panama to Colombia , Venezuela and Brazil to Paraguay . Forest dogs are very rare in most of their range; they are said to occur frequently only in Suriname . The habitat are savannahs, forest edges and gallery forests . Forest dogs are tied to the water and always appear near rivers and lakes.
behavior
A forest dog pack consists of up to ten animals led by an alpha pair. These packs hunt together. A prey animal is often driven in the direction of others by some members of the pack. The aim of the hunt is often a river, where the forest dogs, as good divers and swimmers, are often superior to their prey.
Forest dogs have a gestation period of 65 to 83 days, after which three to six puppies are born. Exceptionally, a litter can contain up to ten puppies. The lifespan is up to ten years in captivity.
Forest dogs are active during the day and at dusk and spend the night in burrows that were created by armadillos or anteaters . If these are not available, they also rest under tree trunks and rocks.
The most common prey animals are agoutis , pakas and capybaras . Occasionally they even hunt adult tapirs in packs . In addition, armadillos , peccaries , spit deer , coatis , possums , tapetis , rheas , cockatoos and a large number of small rodents have been identified as prey . In addition to humans, the jaguar and puma are natural enemies of the forest dog.
Systematics
There are three subspecies:
- Speothos venaticus panamensis : in Panama as well as in northern Colombia and Venezuela
- Speothos venaticus venaticus : the most widespread subspecies lives in central Brazil and in the neighboring regions of Colombia, Venezuela, Peru , Bolivia and Paraguay and also in Guyana , Suriname and French Guiana
- Speothos venaticus wingei : in the southern Brazilian states of Paraná , Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul , also in eastern Paraguay and in Misiones .
The panamensis subspecies is smaller than the other two. The subspecies venaticus is darker in color than the other two.
Early systematics saw a relationship between the forest dog, the red dog and the African wild dog , due to similarities in the dentition, and united all of them in a subfamily Simocyoninae. Today these similarities are seen as a result of convergence . According to current knowledge, the forest dog is the sister species of the maned wolf .
swell
- Beatriz de Mello Beisiegel, Gerald L. Zuercher: Speothos venaticus . Mammalian Species No. 783, 2005.
Web links
- Information on the history of the development of the South American wild dogs
- Speothos venaticus in the Red List of Threatened Species of the IUCN 2006. Posted by: Sillero-Zubiri & Hoffmann, 2004. Retrieved on 11 May, 2006.