Annika Lipp recently returned from a Botswana Wildside BT14 camping tour, which took them through the wildlife paradise of the Okavango Delta, Moremi Game Reserve, Savuti and Chobe National Park.
Due to the fact that they were 'camping wild' in all of the mentioned places, they got to experience an abundance of wildlife very close and had very high chances of a lot of special sightings. Besides breathtaking sightings such as a female leopard and her cub in Moremi, Hyena in their camp and a pride of lion with cubs in Savuti, their most special sighting was the rare African Wild Dog...

 

Annika's group was not only lucky enough to see the African Wild Dog, or 'Painted Dog', as this interesting creature is also called, but they witnessed them feeding on a kill, which gave them the opportunity to witness their special hunting and feeding behavior.
African Wild dogs are the most successful hunters of Southern Africa. They hunt as a pack and run their pray down, starting to feed on it whilst it is still alive and moving. They then finish their meal within 15 minutes, making sure that no other predator is able to steal anything from them.

In this case they witnessed a pack of 10 wild dogs feeding on a female kudu which they had just killed few minutes before the group arrived at the sighting. The dogs were full of blood and swallowed the meat in huge pieces. The fully grown kudu did not even last 20 minutes until it was finished down to the bones. After the wild dogs left their prey, which was basically only bones left, they started calling the rest of the pack which had stayed behind with the puppies in the den. It was fascinating to see how the hunting pack called and then stood with their ears up to wait for the reply to find them. They were not able to follow the pack all the way to their den, but what usually happens in a case like this is that the hunters will regurgitate the meat to make sure that the rest of the pack will also feed.
Their sighting of the African Wild Dogs, of which there are only a few thousand left in total, was even more special due to the behaviour that they were able to witness. These dogs are not only beautiful creatures but also very social animals which are interesting to watch and understand in their life as packs. A really special experience for the tour indeed!