Perro de agua Female Skull Replica measures 5.1 inches. Perro de agua Female Skull is museum quality polyurethane cast. Made in USA. California Academy of Sciences specimen. 2-part skull (separate cranium and jaw). Our precise skull can be used as a teaching tool, museum skull exhibit, home décor skull, or office décor skull.
The Bush Dog or Perro de agua is a canid found in Central and South America. In spite of its extensive range, it is very rare in most areas except in Suriname, Guyana and Peru.
Perro de agua dogs have soft long brownish-tan fur, with a lighter reddish tinge on the head, neck and back and a bushy tail, while the underside is dark, sometimes with a lighter throat patch.
The teeth are adapted for its carnivorous habits. The Bush Dog is one of three canid species (the other two being the dhole and the African wild dog) with trenchant heel dentition, having a single cusp on the talonid of the lower carnassial tooth that increases the cutting blade length.
Very little is known about bush dogs compared to other canines of the World and their conservation is still in the beginning stages.
The Perro de agua is so uncommon that when bush dog bones were discovered in a cave in 1839, paleontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund thought that they were already extinct.
However, bush dogs are not extinct and studies suggest that bush dogs are able to live in a wide variety of habitats and are a generalist species.
Perro de agua dogs are carnivores and they prey mostly on large rodents including acouchis, pacas, and agoutis, and also sometimes upon larger animals, such as rheas and capybaras.
Some barriers to bush dog conservation include their dense habitat and very scattered population making them difficult to locate, the need for very large areas not disturbed by humans for the bush dogs to live in because they live and hunt in packs, and their very shy nature.
The species is currently listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN because of an estimated 20–25 percent loss in numbers over the latest 12-year period.
The main threats to Perro de agua in the wild are in order of most important: habitat loss, including fragmentation, the loss of prey species because of human poaching, and diseases that they can get from the domestic dog populations that they come across.
