It might have been one of the creepiest faces I've ever stared into. The bloodied face of an African wild dog, and so many of them that we saw were bloodied. And how could they not be? They're incredible hunters and succeed so often since they hunt in packs. This beauty was one of many in the first pack we came upon during a safari in Botswana. In fact, except for some elephants drinking from a water hole that we watched on the way from the airstrip to camp, the wild dogs were the very first animals we came upon during our first actual game drive in Botswana. We saw so many during our stay in the country (they are quite rare, though) that we often kept driving past them as the days went by as if they were invisible.
This group of African wild dogs had just killed an impala before our vehicle arrived. The peculiar squeals they made attracted us to the site. "Make sure you take videos, too," our safari guide and driver told us, reminding us that photos are great but videos help you save the experience for ourselves and to share with others. He told us how rare it was to see wild dogs and, once we saw him take out his own camera, we knew it truly was a rare moment and an important enough one since even our safari guide wanted to record it.
While this one definitely looks like a bloodied killing machine (which I guess it is), they were not scary to watch or be close to. They were amazing to watch, as they did their ritualistic "dances" before setting out on another hunt (described in another post, here).
If you take away their large ears, they could even pass as your everyday dog I suppose, but I doubt any of your dogs look the way this one does unless you spilled an entire bowl of ketchup on your kitchen floor and asked your dog to help clean it up.
But even so, how could you not love—or at least respect—that face?
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