Painted Dog Skull Replica measures 7.4 inches. Exact Painted Dog Skull is museum quality polyurethane cast. 2-part skull (separate cranium and jaw). Made in USA.
The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), also known as the painted dog or Cape hunting dog, is a wild canine native to sub-Saharan Africa.
These dogs have many names such as the African Wild Dog, Cape Hunting Dog, Painted Hunting Dog, Painted Lycaon Dog and Painted Wolf.
African wild dogs once ranged across much of sub-Saharan Africa, being absent only in the driest deserts and lowland forests.
The species has been largely exterminated in North and West Africa, and its population has greatly reduced in Central Africa and northeast Africa.
The majority of the species’ population now occurs in Southern Africa and southern East Africa; more specifically in countries such as Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.
However, it is hard to track where they are and how many there are because of the loss of habitat.
A stable population comprising more than 370 individuals is present in South Africa, particularly the Kruger National Park.
The Painted Dog is the largest wild canine in Africa, and the only extant member of the genus Lycaon, which is distinguished from Canis by dentition highly specialized for a hyper carnivorous diet, and by a lack of dewclaws.
It’s estimated that there are around 6,600 adult Painted Dogs (including 1,400 mature individuals) living in 39 subpopulations that are all threatened by habitat fragmentation, human persecution, and outbreaks of disease.
As the largest subpopulation probably comprises fewer than 250 Lycaon pictus individuals, the African wild dog has been listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1990.
The species is a specialized diurnal hunter of ungulates, which it captures by using its stamina and cooperative hunting to exhaust them.
Its natural competitors are lions and spotted hyenas: the former will kill the dogs where possible, whilst the latter are frequent kleptoparasites.
Like other canids, the Painted Dog regurgitates food for its young, but also extends this action to adults, as a central part of the pack’s social unit. The young have the privilege to feed first on carcasses.
