Our first collared dhole! Click here for more pictures.
I have been trying to capture a dhole (Asiatic wild dog) for attachment of a GPS tracking collar for over 5 years. What a technical, time consuming, and complex undertaking. There was the original set up of our project, finding a suitable location with a knowledgeable field staff, then a delay of a year simply to obtain research permits for Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary, in south central Thailand. Several grant proposals were required along the way to fund equipment and cameras. First, we had to locate a dhole pack. This meant long heat-filled days of trudging through the forest to check our cameras and get a sense of where wildlife was moving. It is expensive to send manufactured live traps to Thailand, so instead we scoured markets looking for local materials and designed our own box traps. Those traps had to sit out in the forest to lose human scent before cautions animals would venture close. And if you do catch an animal, what next? Of course you have to have an on-call skilled veterinarian ready because dholes are very susceptible to stress and overheating. It is not so easy to fund and schedule a vet to stay in an isolated field site. So, after delays and mishaps and years of groundwork, this time we were ready. And we weren’t leaving anything to chance. We prepared for various situations. If it could improve our odds, I would consider it.
This led our team to visit the sanctuary spirit house. We were informed by the local staff that we should first ask permission from the forest spirits before attempting to catch dholes. My adviser, Nuch, performed the offering of incense and promised two pig heads if we were successful.
Just days into our trapping, during an early morning site check, we heard whining….a canid. But, nope, no dhole…an Asiatic jackal. Good, at least the traps were working. At the end of the day, the staff joked that perhaps the spirits were confused. Why did they send the wrong animal? Did we need to bring a photograph to the spirit house? See…THIS is what we want…a dhole is RED. The RED one!
As it turned out, a few days later, on January 26th, it was indeed a dhole in the trap. My assistant named the male “Suriya” which roughly translates as the time period of mid-morning. Based on his teeth, Suriya is five to six years old. We fitted him with a GSM/GPS collar. This collar records his location on a set schedule and stores the GPS locations in the collar. When Suriya ventures within range of a cell-phone tower, the data is sent directly to me. I can monitor him from back at my desk in the U.S.
And we immediately made good on our promise of the pig heads.
I have been trying to capture a dhole (Asiatic wild dog) for attachment of a GPS tracking collar for over 5 years. What a technical, time consuming, and complex undertaking. There was the original set up of our project, finding a suitable location with a knowledgeable field staff, then a delay of a year simply to obtain research permits for Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary, in south central Thailand. Several grant proposals were required along the way to fund equipment and cameras. First, we had to locate a dhole pack. This meant long heat-filled days of trudging through the forest to check our cameras and get a sense of where wildlife was moving. It is expensive to send manufactured live traps to Thailand, so instead we scoured markets looking for local materials and designed our own box traps. Those traps had to sit out in the forest to lose human scent before cautions animals would venture close. And if you do catch an animal, what next? Of course you have to have an on-call skilled veterinarian ready because dholes are very susceptible to stress and overheating. It is not so easy to fund and schedule a vet to stay in an isolated field site. So, after delays and mishaps and years of groundwork, this time we were ready. And we weren’t leaving anything to chance. We prepared for various situations. If it could improve our odds, I would consider it.
This led our team to visit the sanctuary spirit house. We were informed by the local staff that we should first ask permission from the forest spirits before attempting to catch dholes. My adviser, Nuch, performed the offering of incense and promised two pig heads if we were successful.
Just days into our trapping, during an early morning site check, we heard whining….a canid. But, nope, no dhole…an Asiatic jackal. Good, at least the traps were working. At the end of the day, the staff joked that perhaps the spirits were confused. Why did they send the wrong animal? Did we need to bring a photograph to the spirit house? See…THIS is what we want…a dhole is RED. The RED one!
As it turned out, a few days later, on January 26th, it was indeed a dhole in the trap. My assistant named the male “Suriya” which roughly translates as the time period of mid-morning. Based on his teeth, Suriya is five to six years old. We fitted him with a GSM/GPS collar. This collar records his location on a set schedule and stores the GPS locations in the collar. When Suriya ventures within range of a cell-phone tower, the data is sent directly to me. I can monitor him from back at my desk in the U.S.
And we immediately made good on our promise of the pig heads.