Kick-ass! How donkeys are used by farmers to scare off wild dogs

ANTHONY GOUGH

THE COURIER-MAIL

MARCH 23, 2014 3:17PM

WILD dogs beware — you are in for an ass-whipping.

Donkeys are increasingly being used by farmers to keep wild dogs at bay, and while canines may be man’s best friend, they’re not winning any popularity competitions with these beasts of burden.

“A donkey loves to be with a lot of mates. There’s only one animal he really doesn’t like at all, and that’s canines,” said Heike Mack-Behle, from Destiny Boonah Eco Cottages and Donkey Farm.

Ms Mack-Behle said she started rehoming donkeys 10 years ago, and in that time she had helped find new homes for around 600 donkeys on farms protecting everything including sheep, goats, calves and even ostriches from wild dogs.

“It’s an instinct. Some donkeys love dogs, but it’s really only 15 per cent,” she said.

Continued

Wild dogs kill 4 people at Mexico City park

MEXICO CITY - Authorities have confirmed that four people whose mutilated bodies were found in a hilly park on the eastern edge of Mexico City over the past two weeks were killed by wild dogs.

Mexico City prosecutors said in a statement that experts determined that a woman and a 1-year-old child found in the Cerro de la Estrella park in Iztapalapa on Dec. 29 had bled to death.

Prosecutors said Monday the bodies had been partially eaten and that the woman was missing her left arm.

Visitors to the same park on Friday found the bodies of two teenagers who had been attacked by dogs and bled to death.

Prosecutors say at least 100 police officers are searching the area and have trapped 25 dogs. Authorities have warned against visiting the park.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_22330389/wild-dogs-kill-4-people-at-mexico-city?source=rss_viewed

East Nashville residents fear pack of dogs roaming neighborhood

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -

Several residents in a South Inglewood neighborhood said a pack of wild dogs has been running loose and now they're looking for someone to take control.

The residents told Nashville's News 2 that on any given day a pack of up to seven wild dogs can be seen roaming up and down Burns Street wreaking havoc.

"They sort of control the neighborhood for all of us because none of us feel safe walking, they attack dogs, chase children," Jennifer Chesak said.

Last week, Chesak witnessed the pack attacking her dog, Fiver.

"This dog pack just descended upon him and they had him in their mouths and were tossing him around just like a little rag doll," she said.

Another neighbor, Estella Watkins believed the pack of dogs killed her miniature poodle several years ago.

The residents said these dogs have been a problem for several years because they continue to breed.

However the residents are frustrated because no one has stepped forward as the owner of these dogs, even though they believe one neighbor is responsible for keeping the pack around.

"My neighbor says they're not his dogs but they go to his home, that's where they live, they eat, the rest, that's where we see them go," said Watkins.

Chesak added, "The dogs are just free to harm us in anyway they want there's no consequences for this guy, that owns them or doesn't own them."

Neighbors said Metro Animal Control has been out to try and catch the dogs several times, but each time they've been unsuccessful.

"They [Metro Animal Control] can't catch them; they can't get close to the dogs."

Watkins added, "It seems like the dogs know when Metro Animal Control is coming because all of the sudden they disappear."

Animal Control has set up traps but these neighbors hope the dogs are caught before anyone gets hurt.
"It's terrifying and they may attack me," explained Chesak.

According to Metro Animal Control's Web site, dogs are not permitted at any time to run at large in Davidson County.

http://www.wkrn.com/story/18159581/east-nashville-residents-fear-pack-of-dogs-roaming-neighborhood

Wild dogs didn't go extinct in east Africa after all

In 1991, conservationists announced with dismay that endangered African wild dogs had gone extinct from the Serengeti-Mara region of east Africa. Now the latest genetic study reveals that this proclamation may have been premature – it turns out they almost certainly didn't go extinct at all.

A team of UK and US researchers genetically analysed a rare bounty of samples taken both from the dogs before their apparent extinction, and from new packs that naturally re-established in the area ten years later in 2001.

To their surprise, they found that almost all of the new dogs are genetically related to the original Serengeti-Mara population, meaning that some dogs must have persisted undetected in the region after 1991.

'The data suggest that there wasn't complete extinction in the region, which is encouraging,' says Dr Barbara Mable from the University of Glasgow, who led the study.

Mable and colleagues from the universities of Glasgow and California also discovered that the disappearance of the dogs in the early 90s had almost no effect on the genetic diversity of the population.

'The diversity maintained in the recolonising populations suggests that they could make a good recovery,' adds Mable. 'Their numbers have increased rapidly after 2001.'

Despite this welcome news, scientists are still puzzled about why the dogs disappeared in the first place, and then why they turned up again ten years later.

'Our findings still can't explain the puzzling cause of the disappearance of so many packs of dogs from the monitoring area. One possibility is that animals remained or moved to areas outside of the Serengeti national park that weren't monitored regularly,' says Mable.

'The terrain in this region is pretty inaccessible, and is marked by a density of trees, bushes and grasses, so it isn't easy to keep track of wild dogs, which tend to be on the move a lot.'

When the Serengeti-Mara packs first disappeared, there was much heated debate about the likely cause. Critics claimed that handling by veterinarians and conserationists may have accelerated their decline by somehow helping to spread rabies and distemper from domestic dogs to wild dogs. 'But this is highly implausible and there was no concrete scientific evidence to support these claims,' says Mable.

Indeed, the shock of the dogs' assumed extinction led the authorities to ban anyone - include veterinarians - from handling them. While this might have seemed like the best approach, the flipside of this stance meant that rabies and distemper vaccination programs designed to help safeguard this endangered species were held up.

So when it emerged that scientists had collected samples from the Serengeti-Mara wild dogs before 1991 and after their return in 2001, Mable and her colleagues were keen to investigate. They wanted to see if they could get to the bottom of the dogs' 1991 disappearance.

African wild dogs have huge home ranges, travelling as far as 250 kilometres to establish new packs. This led the researchers to come up with three possible suggestions for the ancestry of the new dogs.

Either the original population went extinct in 1991, and the re-established pack came from a completely different population; the original population didn't go extinct at all; or the new population is a mixture of dogs from the original packs and new migrants.

Mable and her colleagues discovered that most of the new dogs are related to the original pack, but they also found that dogs from completely different populations had made it into this new population.

'The dogs didn't return to the Serengeti itself, which may be because they're avoiding the growing lion population there,' says Mable.

'Our results highlight the importance of long-term field projects like this one to keep track of the genetic ancestry of endangered animals,' she adds.

African wild dogs have been classed as endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species for 22 years. Ongoing conflict with people, limits in the availability of their favourite prey - such as Impala, Greater Kudu, and Thomson's Gazelle - and habitat fragmentation, seems to responsible for their continued decline.

The study is published in Conservation Genetics.

Clare D. Marsden, Robert K. Wayne and Barbara K. Mable, Inferring the ancestry of African wild dogs that returned to the Serengeti-Mara,Conservation Genetics, published online 25 December 2011, DOI 10.1007/s10592-011-0304-z

http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=1140

Moscow's wild dogs ride subways to city centre in search of food

Each morning, like clockwork, they board the subway, off to begin their daily routine amidst the hustle and bustle of the city.

But these aren’t just any daily commuters. These are stray dogs who live in the outskirts of Moscow Russia and commute on the underground trains to and from the city centre in search of food scraps.

Then after a hard day scavenging and begging on the streets, they hop back on the train and return to the suburbs where they spend the night.

Experts studying the dogs, who usually choose the quietest carriages at the front and back of the train, say they even work together to make sure they get off at the right stop – after learning to judge the length of time they need to spend on the train.

Scientists believe this phenomenon began after the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, and Russia’s new capitalists moved industrial complexes from the city centre to the suburbs.

Dr Andrei Poiarkov, of the Moscow Ecology and Evolution Institute, said: “These complexes were used by homeless dogs as shelters, so the dogs had to move together with their houses. Because the best scavenging for food is in the city centre, the dogs had to learn how to travel on the subway – to get to the centre in the morning, then back home in the evening, just like people.”

Dr Poiarkov told how the dogs like to play during their daily commute. He said: “They jump on the train seconds before the doors shut, risking their tails getting jammed. They do it for fun. And sometimes they fall asleep and get off at the wrong stop.”

The dogs have also amazingly learned to use traffic lights to cross the road safely, said Dr Poiarkov. And they use cunning tactics to obtain tasty morsels of shawarma, a kebab-like snack popular in Moscow.

With children the dogs “play cute” by putting their heads on youngsters’ knees and staring pleadingly into their eyes to win sympathy – and scraps.

Dr Poiarkov added: “Dogs are surprisingly good psychologists.”

By Elaine Furst For Dog Files
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2apKTx/www.thedogfiles.com/2011/03/21/moscow%E2%80%99s-wild-dogs-ride-subways-to-city-center-in-search-of-food/

Legendary chupacabra spotted in Texas?

May 19, 2011 12:08 PM

Sightings of the legendary chupacabra continue - this time with a peculiar animal spotted in Helotes, Texas. KENS-TV's Karen Grace reports.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7366614n

Dingo baby case re-opens in Australia with new inquest

11 October 2010

Australia is launching a new inquiry into the 1980 death of baby Azaria Chamberlain, whose parents always said she was killed by a dingo.

Lindy and Michael Chamberlain were convicted over the 10-week old baby's death in 1982 but later cleared after evidence indicated a dingo attack.

A third inquest, held in 1995, recorded an open verdict, but the parents say that has left room for doubt.

Mr Chamberlain said he had been told an inquest could take place in early 2011.

Both he and his now former wife, Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton, had been asked to submit new evidence to the Northern Territories registrar of births, deaths and marriages, he said.

Mr Chamberlain told ABC News there would always be people who "out of prejudice and lack of knowledge or lack of facts" would blame him and his former wife.

He said the open verdict in 1995 had "sullied the waters" and "made us look like we might have been potentially guilty again".

"It's justice for Azaria. Her spirit does not rest because the truth was never told about how she actually died," he said.

Mr Chamberlain said his lawyers were now gathering evidence about other dingo attacks, including the killing of a nine-year-old child by two dingoes in 2001.

"They confuse human prey with animal prey and look upon them as fair game no matter what they are, a kangaroo, a calf, a lamb, a wallaby or a baby," he said.

Any inquest should also investigate the original police investigation, said Mr Chamberlain, following long-standing accusations from both parents that the forensics teams lost or mishandled evidence.

Chance discovery

Virtually ever since Azaria disappeared from a campsite near Uluru (Ayers Rock) in 1980, Australia has been engrossed by the question of whether she was taken by a dingo, says the BBC's Nick Bryant in Sydney.

Two years after her death, Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton was found guilty of her baby's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, while Mr Chamberlain was found guilty of being an accessory.

Both were later exonerated on all charges, after the chance discovery of a fragment of Azaria's clothing in an area dotted with dingo lairs.

In August this year, Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton issued an emotional open letter calling for the dingo attack to be officially acknowledged.

Three coronial inquests, two appeals and a Royal Commission have so far failed to conclusively find the cause of Azaria's death.

But while her parents have been exonerated by law, they remain the victims of innuendo and gossip, says our correspondent, and as long as the cause of death officially remains unknown, the rumours will continue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11511581
(Via CFZ Australia)