A home range is the area where a pack lives. A wild dog pack's home range can be 200 to 2,000 square kilometers. Wild dogs live in packs of about 7 to 15 dogs, and each pack is usually led by one breeding pair, a male and a female. African wild dogs live in open grassland and savanna, and long ago, wild dogs lived across most of Africa south of the Sahara. Wild dogs once lived in 39 countries, but as of November 2026, wild dogs live in 14 countries, and most live in southern Africa and the southern part of East Africa.
African wild dogs hunt together as a team, in packs. Wild dogs mainly eat antelope, such as gazelles and impalas. They hunt mostly in the early morning and around dusk. Scientists put GPS collars on a pack in Botswana. The collars measured a top running speed of 68.4 kilometers per hour (19 meters per second) in a chase. Fact sheets say a wild dog can run up to about 37 to 41 miles an hour for up to 3 miles, but that figure is an estimate, not a measurement.
Long ago, packs of up to 100 wild dogs were recorded, before the number of wild dogs fell. As of November 2026, the IUCN, a group that rates how safe each kind of animal is, lists African wild dogs as Endangered, and about 6,600, or fewer, are left in the wild. The biggest danger is habitat loss and fragmentation: wild land cut into small pieces. Wire snares set for bushmeat are a widespread danger across their range. Rabies and canine distemper are diseases. Diseases that spread from domestic dogs are also a danger to wild dog packs.
An African wild dog is about 30 to 43 inches (75 to 110 centimeters) long. It weighs about 18 to 36 kilograms (40 to 79 pounds). It has only four toes on each front foot. Its big, round ears help it stay cool in hot weather. Every wild dog has its own coat pattern. Wild dogs talk to each other with many different sounds. A mother wild dog has her pups in an underground den. It is often a burrow that an aardvark dug. A litter can be as few as 2 pups or as many as 20. The whole pack helps feed the pups by bringing meat back to the den. Wild dogs live about 10 to 12 years in the wild.
Words to know
- estimate: careful guess
- fragmentation: cut into pieces
- snares: wire loops
- rabies: a disease
- antelope: gazelles, impalas
