The Ghost Dogs of the Amazon Get a Bit Less Mysterious

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It took 50 researchers to get a clearer picture of where this mysterious canid roams in the Amazon rain forest.Credit...Galo Zapata-Rios and WCS

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/science/ghost-dog-amazon-rainforest.html?algo=identity&fellback=false&imp_id=77413872&imp_id=834701063


The Ghost Dogs of the Amazon Get a Bit Less Mysterious

Scientists have produced data that shows the range of an enigmatic short-eared canid species that has yet to be widely studied.


By Cara Giaimo

May 4, 2020

It is one of the Amazon rain forest’s most elusive and enigmatic mammals. Experts call the species “shy” or even “a ghost.”

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Or at least a type of dog. The short-eared dog is the only member of the canine genus Atelocynus, and the only such species unique to the Amazon rainforest. In a study published last month in Royal Society Open Science, 50 researchers chipped away at the creature’s mysteries by putting together a large location data set gleaned mostly from camera trap cameos. By mapping the species’s range and determining its preferred habitat, the scientists, many of whom have never encountered the animal in person, hope to help protect it.

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(video at link)

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As a result, the species is “one of the least studied dogs worldwide,” Mr. Rocha said. We don’t know much about their life histories or reproductive strategies, or how many of them exist. We don’t even really know what they eat, although scat studies suggest that they like fish, small mammals and fruit.

Individual experts have gone to great lengths to change that. Renata Leite Pitman, a contributor to the study and the director of the Research Center for Atlantic Forest Conservation, once obtained a short-eared dog pup that had been raised with domestic dogs. She and her assistant, Emeterio Nuñonca Sencia, trained the dog to walk on a leash and took careful notes on what he sniffed at, ate and avoided. She has also managed to track several dogs with radio collars.

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As scientists set up camera traps to study other animals and later looked through the footage, “these dogs would appear,” and they have seldom been studied.Credit...Daniel Rocha

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