Opinion – Reinaldo José Lopes: The true Brazilian wolf

by

Don’t get me wrong, gentle reader: I’ve been a lifelong fan of the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), one of the most beautiful animals in this part of the world. But the popular name given to this canid is nothing more than misleading advertising. Of wolf he has almost nothing. Another creature that only exists in these parts deserves the lupine designation much more. The true Brazilian wolf, my people, is the bush dog (Speothos venaticus), as a new study makes abundantly clear.

It is possible that anyone who has seen the animal in question is holding back a laugh when reading this. Indeed, aside from the no-holds-barred designation (“vinegar”? Really?), there seems to be something intrinsically cute about that squat body and teddy bear face. The species does not usually exceed 7 kg, hell.

It turns out that, despite its wide geographic distribution, bush dogs are still largely a mystery. “I dare say that we know more about the tyrannosaurus rex than about it”, biologist Juan Vítor Ruiz, a doctoral student at Unesp in São José do Rio Preto (SP) told me. Discreet, the animal is difficult to monitor in the wild. “Much of what is said about this species comes from observations in zoos and anecdotes, indigenous knowledge and sertanistas’ chat, told by word of mouth over the past centuries and published in popular books.”

This relative lack of knowledge includes the details of bush dogs’ hunting techniques. Faced with this limitation and the difficulty of travel caused by the pandemic, the team that includes Ruiz and his advisor Felipe Montefeltro decided to carry out a computer simulation of the species’ bite, based on three-dimensional models of its skull, generated from CT scans.

The work also included a comparison with 3D models of wolf skulls and bites (kennels lupus) and gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus🇧🇷 The choice of species is justified because, on the one hand, like wolves, bush dogs are what experts call hypercarnivores —that is, more than 70% of their diet is made up of vertebrates. Gray foxes, on the other hand, eat meat as well as fruits and insects (just like the maned wolf, by the way) and are about the size of bush dogs.

In the research, which should be published soon in the scientific journal Journal of Anatomy, the team focused mainly on the role of canine and scavenger teeth (the latter are, let’s say, the “meat slicers” in the mouth of carnivores). The researchers also examined how they would behave in tasks such as piercing the victim’s body, pulling him back with the force of the bite and shaking him from side to side. And they also took into account the level of stress to which the animals’ skulls are subjected during the bite.

As a result, although the bush dog bears some similarities to the gray fox, its “style” of attack and the resilience of its skull are much more reminiscent of those of wolves. “This corroborates popular knowledge, which portrays this animal as a skillful predator of medium and large mammals, sometimes much larger than itself”, summarizes Ruiz.

There are reports of groups of bush dogs slaughtering capybaras and wild pigs and even subduing tapirs, for example. And it’s no accident—although it has only one-seventh the body mass of a wolf, the animal’s bite is half as strong as its northern cousin, the analysis found. Instead of a teddy bear, we have a runt Hercules in our woods.

You May Also Like

Recommended for you