African dogs at Woodland Park Zoo give insights into true nature of man's best friend

On the surface, there's no similarity between Calvin, Dana Wooster's 15-year-old pug at home, and her charges at Woodland Park Zoo — "The Brothers Four" — a newly installed pack of young, handsome African wild dogs or "painted wolves."

Calvin stubbornly does whatever he wants, though he welcomes Wooster to be part of his family as long as she doesn't take a bite from his bowl.

Conversely, the African wild dogs, the most efficient carnivores on their continent and the fastest disappearing, are all about sharing. They live by the pack and move as one, sleeping in a pile and rubbing against each other all day long. If one were to fall ill in the wild or grow too aged to keep up, another would be left behind to guard him while the rest brought back food.

"I don't think that would ever happen with domestic dogs," said Wooster.

But Wooster has learned plenty about her dog's needs and why he behaves the way he does just from watching Mtima, Bakari, Sadiki and Jalen, the 20-month-old brothers who made their debut at Woodland Park Zoo on June 28. There are definite differences between wild and domestic dogs. But as people line up to watch the antics of this caring, considerate and highly endangered species, Wooster hopes they will see what she sees: how much dogs need to socialize, either with other dogs or with their human pack members.

"It's just like that documentary we watched," one zoogoer said to her daughter, picking up the spirit, "the more intelligent the animal, the more they like to play."

African wild dogs, unlike Australia's dingoes, were never domesticated. This particular foursome was born at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo, one of two dozen U.S. zoos with the species, which have dwindled below 6,000 in the wild.

Beating back boredom

To house the wild dogs for the first time in the zoo's history, Woodland Park tore out cages to build a 5,000-square-foot enclosure, designed to look like an African flood-plain riverbank, right down to imitation termite hills.

Now comes the hard part: keeping these dogs stimulated, though in some ways it's easy for Wooster because the dogs have each other. All Calvin has at home is cats.

Wooster knows that Calvin is sometimes driven to do what could be considered bad behavior because of lack of stimulation. He shreds things he shouldn't; he eats the cat food knowing that's a no-no. But now that Wooster has watched the African wild dogs, she's reminded that some of what Calvin does has more to do with thousands of years of natural behavior than with personal grudges. Her wild boys like to roll in the worst smelling things they can find, too.

The African wild dogs are used to traveling great distances in a day to hunt. Here they are confined. Wooster does what she can to keep them occupied.

"Hi, everybody, I'm here," she announces to the dogs in the morning in a high-pitched, excited voice, stirring them from their hay-bale beds. The dogs get so excited in return, Wooster has to wear earplugs.

She teaches them commands to keep them busy. Some days they're completely focused and compete to outdo each other. On other days, "they're like a bunch of adolescents," and so she just lets them play.

"It is really fun to be around some young, enthusiastic animals," she said, no offense to Calvin.

While Wooster sits in a chair outside their den, they line up to sit, lie down, even "freeze" their noses to her fist through a wire opening so she can check the health of their eyes and ears. They are immediately rewarded with balled-up meat, fed by hand.

Doing what comes naturally

As gentle as these carnivores seem in this situation, Wooster knows she would be considered a big chunk of meat if she tested their restraint by getting inside the den.

"It's nothing personal," she said. "If a hot fudge sundae walked by me, I'd go for it."

The dogs shred phone books and newspapers and play with rubber toys or bones or wrestle with each other inside their dens just like domestic dogs. They chase and challenge each other and splash in their pond outside. The more excited they are, the harder they play, so Wooster hides interesting smells and food to add to their excitement.

Turkey paste on logs. Cinnamon, fresh mint and cloves sprinkled around the enclosure. She puts out fresh fennel that she grows at home, an herb Calvin has rolled in for years. On this day, her pièce de résistance is civet musk. The musk has a foul smell. Wooster claims she once wore it to a popular movie and dispersed the whole, long line, thus assuring herself of a seat.

The dogs cascade out of their den in one big heap at 9:30 a.m., which for the next 90 minutes is the best time to see them as they rush from scent to scent "reading their e-mail." Late afternoons are second best, when they start rubbing their paws for dinner. The rest of the time they sleep, except when they lift their radar ears to catch the latest on their natural predators, the lions, who are one enclosure over in the African Savannah.

"It must be like living next door to Charles Manson," Wooster said.

Pack pecking order

The wild dogs vie for position by challenging each other in play. Mtima is the dominant dog so far. He has a heart-shaped white mark on his left shoulder amidst his mottled coat of yellow, black and brown. But Bakari, recognizable by a white crescent in the middle of his back, wants to move up.

There's a lot at stake because only the dominant male and female generally breed in the wild. A female may be introduced to this pack someday.

Time is running out for these dogs in the wild, as it is for many animals. African wild dogs — sometimes called painted dogs or painted wolves or Cape hunting dogs — are the only living representative of their genus, Lycaon pictus. They are more closely related to wolves than to dogs, but they share the same woes with both — rabies, distemper, overcrowded habitat and speeding cars.

Domestic dogs and humans get mutual benefit from each other, Wooster said, but wild dogs do not. So she gives them their space, being careful to stay out of the hierarchy. She does not look the wild dogs in the eye in any way that could be viewed as threatening.

Now that Calvin is losing his sight as well as his hearing, Wooster sometimes just picks him up and puts him where she wants him to be. But the wild dogs have taught her to be more patient with him, she said, and to try to read his body language first or consider the role natural behavior might play.

Of course, some of what she learned in 15 years with Calvin gets applied to the wild dogs, too.

She whistles and then shouts "Hey, boys!" to get the wild dogs to come in at night.

"If they don't come in, I call them by their names," she said. "And if they still don't come in, I call them by other names."

Sherry Stripling: 206-464-2520 or sstripling@seattletimes.com.