Understanding African Wild Dogs: The BioBoundary Project's Breakthroughs in Scent Communication

African wild dog overmarking a synthetic (lab produced artificial) scent mark precisely as if it were a natural scent mark.

The Importance of Scent Communication in African Wild Dogs

A few months ago, Botswana Predator Conservation’s BioBoundary project achieved a significant milestone. For the first time, we captured evidence that African wild dogs respond behaviorally to single lab-produced components of their territorial scent mark signals. They react in the same way they do to natural scent marks.

When an African wild dog pack visits a scent-marking site shared with their neighbors, all the dogs sniff around. They detect and decipher the scent messages left by previous visitors. After this, they urinate or defecate over the previous visitors’ marks. This behavior is known as “overmarking.” These exchanges of scent messages allow packs to communicate while avoiding trespassing into neighbors' core home ranges. This helps prevent direct encounters, which can lead to fatal interactions.

The BioBoundary Project's Objectives

The BioBoundary Project aims to co-opt this territorial scent communication. We use artificial scent marks to deter wild dogs from crossing the borders of wildlife areas into human-dominated landscapes. This crossing often leads to lethal conflicts with humans over livestock attacks.

The wild dogs’ scent signals are carried by their urine and feces. The first step in recreating these signals has been identifying the volatile organic chemicals responsible for them. As the BioBoundary project’s senior researcher, I have identified over 100 components of these odors. However, this complexity makes it technically impractical and financially unrealistic to create exact copies of natural scent marks. Therefore, working versions of the artificial scent marks must be simplified. They will contain only the components that carry the crucial territorial “Keep Out” signal.

PhD Student John Neelo sets the synthetic scent marks at a known marking site.

Testing the Artificial Scent Marks

To investigate this, we are conducting tests at neighboring wild dog packs’ scent-marking sites. We know from thousands of camera trap videos that wild dogs respond to natural scent marks by overmarking. The components included in the formula of an artificial scent mark will depend on the results from these tests and the dogs’ responses to the simple mixtures of lab-identified candidate components.

The actual rate of release into the air of an artificial scent mark is estimated at micrograms (millionths of a gram) per hour. This release occurs as the scent diffuses through a thin membrane covering the vial of the target compound. The controlled-release vials are protected from elephants, hyenas, and wild dogs. We hope the wild dogs will be particularly attracted to them. These vials are housed in metal casings made from galvanized plumbing connectors. They are bolted to metal stakes hammered into the ground, allowing the scent to be released at ground level to replicate natural marks.

Recent Breakthroughs in Scent Communication

A positive test result in this experimental setup occurs when one or more dogs sniff and overmark an artificial scent. We recorded this for the first time recently! The behaviors can be seen clearly in this camera trap video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzNgoPa4Or0. The sniffing and overmarking behaviors of the artificial scent are identical to how the dogs overmark natural scent marks. All compounds that dogs respond to will be included in the synthetic (lab-produced) scent marks tested in pilot-scale BioBoundary deployments.

This time of year is the denning season for Botswana’s wild dogs. Therefore, we do not run experiments during this period. However, once the packs are mobile again and visiting their territorial shared marking sites, we will conduct more tests at additional sites and with different packs. This will allow us to expand the field trials with more candidate components of the dogs’ natural scents.

The Future of the BioBoundary Project

As well as being a critical step towards cost-effective and ecologically benign protection of African wild dog populations, these overmarking responses contribute to our other BioBoundary breakthroughs with other predator species outside protected areas. We are excited about these recent advances and emphasize that Botswana Predator Conservation’s BioBoundary project is the only research project successfully influencing wild predator behavior using chemical signals.

The implications of this research are vast. By understanding and utilizing the natural behaviors of African wild dogs, we can create solutions that benefit both wildlife and human communities. This innovative approach may pave the way for future conservation efforts, ensuring the survival of these remarkable animals in their natural habitats.

In conclusion, the BioBoundary Project represents a pioneering effort in wildlife conservation. By harnessing the power of scent communication, we can help protect African wild dogs and reduce human-wildlife conflict. This project not only enhances our understanding of these fascinating creatures but also highlights the importance of innovative strategies in conservation efforts.

Through continued research and collaboration, we hope to further develop these methods and contribute to the preservation of African wild dogs for generations to come.