#Wild dogs in asia series#

The largest specimens measure over 10 feet (3m) in length and weigh around 350lbs (160kg). Komodo dragons are the biggest lizards in the world. Komodo Dragon Komodo Dragon ( Varanus komodoensis) The one’s on this list are capable of dealing out some of the most unpleasant deaths known. Instead I’m going to concentrate on the meanest, scariest and most notorious of Asian animals. If there were then we’d probably be writing about mosquitos (yawn!). When dealing with the developing world it’s nearly impossible to get anything approaching reliable statistics on animal attacks on deaths. Stretching from the deserts of the Middle East to the steamy jungles of South East Asia and reaching northwards to the Arctic Circle, there’s dangerous animals for all tastes. We’ve got snakes, bears and even tigers, but there’s also a few even nastier deadly animals to be found across the vast continent of Asia. Join TWS now to read the latest in wildlife research.For those of you who’ve seen the Jungle Book then you’re halfway there on this one. Individual online access to all TWS journal articles is a benefit of membership. This article features research that was published in a TWS peer-reviewed journal.

#Wild dogs in asia series#

If you’re working on an interesting camera trap research project or one that has a series of good photos you’d like to share, email Joshua at. Check out other entries in the series here. This photo essay is part of an occasional series from The Wildlife Society featuring photos and video images of wildlife taken with camera traps and other equipment. “ will help ensure a future for dholes in the region.”

As leopard and tiger populations in these areas continue to drop, he said that the presence of apex carnivores like dholes is even more important to keep the ecosystem in balance. Kamler would like to see protected areas in Southeast Asia work harder to prohibit dogs and increase punishment and enforcement of poaching laws.

“They are very susceptible to canine distemper,” Kamler said, because they lick each other more than canids like coyotes ( Canis latrans), increasing their susceptibility. Canine distemper can spread from free-ranging dogs from villages, like the one pictured above. The results offer reasons for hope.īut the dholes face other problems. In a new study, his work on dholes reveals what types of prey help them subsist in areas that face a litany of threats, from poaching to deforestation for logging and development. The information Kamler has gathered on carnivores in the region has helped fill in some of the gaps for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. “You could still read the writing on them,” he said. His research in Southeast Asia has sent him past landmines left behind in Cambodia and unexploded ordinance - like the one he holds in the picture above - lying on the ground in Laos, left over from decades-old U.S. In Malaysia, dholes had smaller packs that preyed on smaller animals, like mouse deer ( Tragulus Spp.). In India and Bhutan, he reviewed previous studies and found that the pack predators hunted larger ungulates, like sambar ( Rusa unicolor) and chital ( Axis axis). Along with tigers ( Panthera tigris tigris) and leopards ( Panthera pardus delacouri), dholes are some of the few remaining large mammal predators that hunt in these jungles. Kamler has tracked dholes ( Cuon alpinus) throughout Asia for years in an effort to learn more about the elusive predators. What he found may offer good news for conserving the species. Unable to reach the dholes themselves, for a recent study published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, Kamler used what they left behind to piece together important information about how the carnivores persist in these environments. “I was always just a day behind them, finding their kills, finding their scats or dens,” said Kamler, a research associate with the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at the University of Oxford in England. Sometimes trekking for months through the rainforests and mountains of Laos and Cambodia, he has spotted plenty of evidence that they had passed through, but the canids - listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature - remained elusive. TWS member Jan Kamler has been hot on the trail of the packs of dholes he’s been studying for years in Southeast Asia. A dhole, the only pack-living wild canid found in many Southeast Asian countries, in Cambodia.