In 2017, researchers got their first glimpse of short-eared dogs’ puppies on camera. Usually they avoid cameras, probably because of the blinking lights and human smells. But as National Geographic’s Nadia Drake reported at the time, a short-eared dog stopped in front of the camera only about 20 minutes after it was set up. In 2014, for example, conservation biologist Lary Reeves set up a GoPro camera near a carcass in the jungle of Peru, hoping to catch a glimpse of the king vultures he’d heard were feeding on it. The new study pieces together sightings from camera traps across the Amazon rainforest, usually brief encounters that were “bycatch” during unrelated research projects, Rocha tells the New York Times. Researchers know from scat samples that the dogs probably eat a mix of small mammals, fish, and even fruit. He saw one for about 20 seconds when it chased a rat into a hollow log. Even University of East Anglia ecologist Carlos Peres, who has worked in the Amazon for almost 40 years, tells the New York Times that his longest encounter with a short-eared dog was brief. Rocha tells the Times that throughout the years-long research project, he never saw one. Short-eared dogs are so secretive that local residents and researchers alike rarely see them in the wild. Instead, short-eared dogs ( Atelocynus microtis) are the only members of their own genus. But short-eared dogs are not in the same genus as domestic dogs ( Canis familiaris) or gray wolves ( Canis lupus). The dogs also have webbed toes which make them strong swimmers, like the ever-popular Labrador retrievers. They’re recognizable by their small ears, dark gray or rusty coloring, and fluffy, foxlike tails. The creatures are extremely shy, preferring to live in swamp forests, bamboo stands and cloud forests that haven’t been disturbed by people. The short-eared dog is different from many wild canines because it doesn’t live in packs, explains Mongabay’s Romi Castagnino. “If we don’t know what we’re losing, it’s really hard to care.” The species is “one of the least studied dogs worldwide,” University of California, Davis ecologist Daniel Rocha tells Cara Giaimo at the New York Times. But almost a third of short-eared dog habitat could be lost by 2027. The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, found that short-eared dogs have been spotted primarily in Brazil and Peru, but they were also found in Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador. The hound in question is the short-eared dog, a solitary canine specially adapted to live in the South American jungle. A new study finds that the Amazon rainforest’s “ghost dog” has haunts across five countries.
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