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Pack News UpdateGMA (Jeki) packThe Jeki pack was renamed the GMA Pack this year, due to the fact it consisted of the two surviving adults, both females, from the Jeki pack, plus all three remaining males from the Mushika pack of 2001. The males migrated into the Game Management Area (GMA) to join the females and the pack has since maintained the GMA as their home range. The final count for the GMA pack in December 20O2 was 16 dogs including pups, compared to seven dogs in December 2001.
The two Jeki females were joined by the three Mushika males in December 2001, and formed a stable pack. In May 2002 “CO” the alpha female gave birth to eleven pups, a count which was confirmed when the pups were seven weeks old. At the end of December 2002 ten of the pupa had survived to seven months old, a high survival rate to date. Moshika packAt the end of 2001 The Moshika pack consisted of only six female dogs (three adults and three yearlings). By the end of December 2002 the pack was once again a breeding unit and consisted of 35 dogs, four adult females, four adult males, and seven pups. One adult female and one yearling female disappeared over the wet season early in 2002, and are presumed dead. However, four males immigrated into the area, also during the rains, and were observed with the remaining four females in June 2002. The males may have emigrated over hundreds of kilometres looking for mates, and are like to be siblings (Fuller et al., 1992). They may have travelled through high risk areas near farms and villages where they would be at risk from snares, shooting, and diseases from domestic dogs, so the fact that they are the first observed successful recruits to the Lower Zambezi area in over five years is very encouraging.
The seven pups are yet to be identified and sexed as the den was moved to a remote and inaccessible area, and by October the dogs had moved even further into the escarpment rather than returning to the valley floor as had been observed in breeding packs in previous years. |
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© Afrikeye 1999 - 2007 (certain items under permission of original copyright owner) |
Only one pup from the Jeki pack litter of 2001 survived to yearling stage in 2002, the female Galadriel. This was most likely a factor of the small number of adults present to raise the May 2001 litter; only two adults would have been present (the two females), with one to two males assisting for limited periods before they both disappeared between June and November 2001. This would have led to limited feeding success and increased risk of predation on the pups (Maddock and Mills, 1994; Fanshawe and Fitzgibbon, 1993; Malcolm and Marten, 19S2).
The alpha female Port, was pregnant by mid-April. It took less than four months for four new males to join the six females abandoned by the Mushika males in December 2001, and form a stable breeding pack.