DOG STARS

Rare and elusive, African wild dogs have incredible hunting abilities and display group dynamics we could learn a lot from

- BELLA FALK

THE LION TRACKS ARE FRESH. Though I'm only an amateur, even I know this because they're sharp, each ghostly step a cleanly defined imprint on sand pitted by last night's rain. Paco Morapedi, my guide, peers over the side of the car, uncertain. “They were moving around a lot, back and forth. It's hard to follow where they went.” It's a sparkling morning in Botswana's Moremi Game Reserve, a huge haven of open grasslands, floodplains currently waterlogged from seasonal rainfall, and perfumed forests where rutted Jeep tracks wind between mature ebony and mopane trees.

We're following the confusion of pawprints more in hope than expectation, pausing occasionally to observe a pair of iridescent Burchell's starlings flashing turquoise in the sunlight, or a yellow-billed stork motionless by a pond, when the radio crackles into life. Another guide has found something even better: African wild dogs.

Priorities immediately updated, Paco throws the Land Cruiser into gear and we speed towards the sighting, surfing over puddles as fast as the muddy road will allow.

African wild dogs, also known as painted dogs, painted wolves or Cape hunting dogs, are notoriously hard to find. Listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, there are fewer than 6,000 left in Africa, with up to only 800 in Botswana, their numbers decimated by the four apocalyptic horsemen of habitat fragmentation, human-wildlife conflict, diseases caught from domestic dogs, and shrinking territories forcing them to compete with larger predators such as lions.