In August of 2025, we visited sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. We flew through New York and Johannesburg and landed in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe where we were whisked into some sort of van and transferred to our hotel to start one of the most adventurous vacations we had taken to that point.
Along the way to the hotel, we saw a sign by the side of the road. You know...one of those "Deer Crossing" signs or whatever they have in the United States to alert drivers to the presence of wildlife. Only this one was bound to be some sort of "Elephant Crossing" or "Lion Crossing" sign since we were in safari country south of the equator on the Dark Continent, right? And sure enough, it was a uniquely African wildlife alert sign. But it wasn't warning motorists of elephants or lions or hippos or even impala on the highway. It was warning travelers about painted dogs on the road.
Painted dogs? What the heck is a painted dog? I believe our exact reaction was something to the effect of "we don't want to see painted dogs". Our guide who was riding along with us on the shuttle van tried to sway our opinion on this one but we were having none of it. Our safari guide a couple of days later seemed to go to extraordinary lengths to try to find these dogs and we still didn't get the appeal.
When we got home, we looked up these painted dog things. Oh. My. God. We missed something special by not looking.
So at the beginning of our second African safari in 2018 when we were asked by our tour leaders what we wanted to see on safari, we of course answered "painted dogs". Not an option. Not going to happen. Not in Kenya and Tanzania. No dice.
Then we went back to African again in 2023. Uganda and Rwanda. Now admittedly this trip was to take a primate-focused safari which featured visits on foot with habituated chimpanzees and gorillas and didn't priortize traditional safari experiences in the bush. But there was one day or so in a Park. How about painted dogs in 2023? Nope. Also a no go. No painted dogs in Uganda. Uh huh.
So now it's 2025 and we headed back to Africa. South Africa. Kruger National Park. And I know well and good that there are painted dogs in Kruger. And of course, the fourth time was the charm. Perhaps that was obvious from the pictures to this point on this post. And yes, indeed, those are painted dogs. But it still wasn't that easy.
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| Check out the coloration on the lead dog in the top photo above. |
I'm going to wager that most people (just like us in 2015) and in particular in America have never heard to these animals. Why would they? Nature shows that we watch usually focus on cats or elephants or mega-fauna like hippos, giraffes and rhinos. And no judgment there. The first safari trip we took in 2015 I had hippos at the top of my personal must-see list.
So what's so special about these painted dogs (sometimes known as African wild dogs), you might ask? I know on some level they look like slightly mangy and skinny puppies with oversized ears, but if that's how you see these things, then you are vastly underrating and underestimating painted dogs. And you do not want to underestimate painted dogs.
Of all the hunters in Africa, painted dogs are the most fearsome. Not because they are people killers either purposefully (because they aren't) or accidentally (because it doesn't happen with painted dogs like it happens with African buffalo or those beloved hippos of mine) but because when they decide to hunt something, they generally get it. While exact statistics about hunt success rates are anecdotal at best, our guide Gareth for our four days of safari put their success rate at 80 percent. This is backed up by a quick google search which reveals numbers between 60 and 90 percent. Going with the quoted 80 number, that means once painted dogs start a hunt, they get four out of every five targets.
Perhaps some perspective is in order because when I decide to hunt down some food, my success rate is pretty much 100%. It doesn't work that way in the animal kingdom. A similar google search for lions gets me a success rate of less than 20% for solo hunts and about 30% for group hunts. Leopard? Less than 40%. Cheetah? Maybe as high as 60% (speed kills, right?). 80 percent is insanely high.
So why does an animal that's nowhere near as fast as a cheetah and nowhere near as big or strong as a leopard (or certainly an adult male lion) hunt so well? Simple. They are coordinated social animals, they are persistent and they are distance runners in the most extreme sense. They generally won't tire before their prey. And they can run at about 40 kilometers per hour for five kilometers at a time.
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| Play fighting (top) and fighting over bones (bottom). |
Of course, these animals are endangered. I mean eventually pretty much every creature in the world except man is going to be endangered because of man. But painted dogs are already there. What's the issue here? Diseases (read: man), habitat destruction (read: man) and killings (read: man) when the dogs encroach upon livestock adjacent to areas where they live.
All told in Africa, maybe there are between 6,500 and 7,000 total out there in the wild. And since I gave perspective vs. other species on the hunting statistics, there are about 500,000 elephants and 35,000 or so lions on the continent. 6,500 to 7,000 is not a lot at all. Kruger National Park houses maybe 300 to 350 and it's about 20% larger than the state of Connecticut in size. Does finding one of 350 dogs in an area that size seem like a tall task? It certainly did to me. So while we pestered Gareth every day as to when we were going to get to see the painted dogs, our hopes were set suitably low.
And for three days, Kruger disappointed. Well, disappointed as far as painted dogs go. Kruger is amazing and I'm sure I'll make that abundantly clear in future posts. But days one through three...lots of looking and no painted dogs. Our tour group was divided into two carloads and the other car saw maybe a glimpse on day three. But us...nothing.
Day four was an optional, additional cost, safari. And we had to do it. This is why we came. We set off into the park just after 5:30 a.m. and at 6:30 a.m. we found some painted dogs. This couldn't have paid off any better.
The sighting we had was thrilling. Finally seeing these dogs after effectively 10 years of searching was just awesome. And there were a ton of other safari vehicles hanging around. So much so that with the pack of dogs stretched out so far, we left.
I know, right? This was not solely our decision. In fact, it wasn't our decision at all. These things happen sometimes in a car full of people you don't know with a guide who presumably is making good decisions. It could have been disastrous. But that last part is critical to note. Because Gareth did, in fact, know what he was doing. Less than an hour later and another pack. This time finishing off the last of a kill. Young impala. Yummy!
Most of the videos I've watched online of painted dogs have been hunting videos. In fact, I think they all might have been hunting videos. They are exciting and thrilling and ultimately upsetting, particularly if you find one where the dogs start eating their prey before it's actually dead (because they do not really worry about the object of their hunt being dead before they start eating).
The end of a feast after a kill was a different scene. And this is why going to see wildlife in the actual wild is so valuable. You don't always get what you think you will get and sometimes seeing a slice of life that is different than what you would select of an on-demand wildlife safari (if there were such a thing) is super valuable.
While there were one or two dogs still crunching on (see the second picture above) or fighting over (picture a little further above) impala bones, most of the pack was chilled out interacting with each other. Maybe there's a tussle or two over the last couple of bones or some play fighting (sometime involving those very same bones) or just some chasing each other but it was pretty serene. While I am sure there are times that this sort of play is something other than play, the day we were there was very good natured. These dogs are a family and a hunting collective. It pays to work together rather than compete most days I guess.
Despite the lack of a hunt, we still got an amazing impression of what these dogs are made of. Their playing and running got us a great look at how light on their feet they are. This is one of the most impressive features of these dogs. They don't really stand and trot. They almost glide. They appear to be completely weightless. They are absolutely as lean as a hunter can possibly be. I can't imagine how scary a pack of these things is when chasing prey. The sense of the inevitable must be soul-crushing to whatever animal is being pursued.
But we also got to see the pack in action in a different way. One of the side-stories from our second pack viewing was that there were a couple of hyenas hanging around looking to steal the last of the impala skeleton from the dogs. The hyenas would advance and retreat, I guess testing the dogs attentiveness. One of the hyenas had blood all over its back leg, which I suppose could have been the result of a dog attack.
At one time, there must have been a particularly realistic theft attempt or the dogs just got sick of the threat (we couldn't tell because the hyenas were behind our vehicle) because the pack mobilized. The alpha male and female both started running towards the hyenas and pretty much every adult dog followed. And quickly. No debate. No hesitation. Almost all of them left to fight together.
Almost all. Because a couple stayed back to protect the pups. And more importantly, it appeared to our uneducated eyes that one of the dogs who was staying behind actually blocked one of the older pups who was trying to follow the alphas. He (I'm assuming it was a boy pup) kept trying to run to the location with the hyenas and she (again...assuming) kept cutting him off, driving him in the other direction or into the bush where it was less easy to run free.
If we were reading the situation correctly, that is really pretty excellent and so cool. It is way more fun to watch animals who have complex social structures like elephants and lions and primates than some other species. We got over 30 minutes of this with painted dogs over two separate sessions in one single day of safari. That may not seem like a lot but a safari is not a continuous wildlife watching experience. When you are done with one species you don't just move to the next enclosure or cage and instantly see the next one like you do at a zoo. Moments like this are fleeting and pretty much completely uncontrollable. We got super lucky here.
Ten years of looking (granted with large gaps of about 2-1/2 years between looks) and Kruger and Gareth solved it for us in four days. What now, Africa? Now that we have found your painted dogs.
