【文章标题】：Africa’s Wild Dogs Are the Most Hated Carnivores on the Continent
【非洲野犬：这片大陆上最遭人憎恨的食肉动物】
【文章正文】：
Africa’s Wild Dogs Are the Most Hated Carnivores on the Continent. Here’s Why Some Conservationists Are Saving Them Anyway
非洲野犬是这片大陆上最遭人憎恨的食肉动物。但此刻，你正目睹着保育团队如何拯救这些濒危生灵——他们密切追踪着这些顽皮的犬科动物，帮助它们组建多样化族群以阻止种群消亡。
Meet the team that closely monitors the playful canines, which need help to form diverse packs and stop their numbers from dwindling
两辆白色皮卡停靠在横穿沃特堡（距约翰内斯堡三小时车程的南非自治区）的高速公路旁。若徒步经过，你或许会被车内的喘息声吸引——透过三个绿色木箱顶部的孔洞，可见黑白金三色相间的肋骨随呼吸起伏，皮毛若隐若现。
Two white pickup trucks are parked beside a highway that cuts through the Waterberg, a South African municipality three hours from Johannesburg. Passing the trucks on foot, you might hear something that makes you stop: Their cargo is panting. Just visible through the holes at the top of three green wooden crates is fur over rib cages, mottled black, white and gold, rising and falling.
这三只沉睡的雌性非洲野犬是亲姐妹。即便以该物种日均迁徙30英里、活动范围达1000英里的标准衡量，她们过去数周的旅程也堪称漫长。她们从莫桑比克的卡林加尼野生动物保护区乘机而来，受惠于濒危野生动物信托基金（EWT）的非洲野犬栖息地扩展计划。
The three sleeping female African wild dogs, sisters, have traveled a long way in the past few weeks, even by the standards of their species, which can cover 30 miles a day and occupy ranges of 1,000 miles. They arrived by plane from Karingani Game Reserve in Mozambique, courtesy of the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s African wild dog range expansion program.
这项始于1997年的项目，29年来已使全球野犬数量增加超过344只。它将野犬引入数十年未见其踪迹的国家保护区——例如在1977-1992年内战期间该物种绝迹的莫桑比克。莫桑比克族群繁育如此成功，EWT正将年轻野犬送至南非组建基因多元的新族群。三姐妹被注射了镇静剂，这是将它们送往未来数周临时住所（一个配备追踪项圈、专为该物种设计的先进围栏）的必要风险步骤。
The project, which started in 1997, has increased the world’s wild dog population by more than 344 in 29 years. It introduces dogs to wildlife reserves in countries where they haven’t been seen in decades—for instance, Mozambique, where the species disappeared during a civil war that lasted from 1977 to 1992. The Mozambican packs have bred so successfully that the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) is now bringing young dogs to South Africa to form new, genetically diverse packs here. The three sisters have been darted with sedatives, a risky but necessary step in moving them to their new home for the next few weeks—a state-of-the-art enclosure, or boma, the first designed specifically to hold their species—before they’re released, with tracking collars, into the wild.
这三姐妹占全球现存6600只非洲野犬的相当比例。据世界自然基金会统计，它们位列全球最濒危物种。又称开普猎犬或彩绘犬，它们形似四肢不协调的杂种犬：碟状大黑耳、细腿配巨爪、蓬松白尾，每只犬独特的黑白金斑纹比蛇、斑马或豹纹更具抽象表现主义风格。
The sisters represent a not insignificant portion of 6,600 African wild dogs left in the world. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the animals are among the world’s most endangered. Also known as Cape hunting or painted dogs, they resemble large, gangly mongrels with extremities picked from a safari odds-and-ends bin: big, disc-shaped black ears, large paws on skinny legs and fluffy white tails. Each dog’s fur has a clearly unique pattern of black, gold and white splotches—more Abstract Impressionist than the designs that cover snakes, zebras or leopards.
野犬以80%的狩猎成功率冠绝非洲（狮子仅30%）。但这恰恰是其濒危主因：私人保护区主宁杀之也不愿损失昂贵猎物，农户同样视其为牲畜威胁。《生态与演化》2021年研究显示，在肯尼亚、博茨瓦纳和津巴布韦，15年间44%的野犬死亡源于人类因素（直接猎杀或家犬传播疾病）。栖息地碎片化更使它们难觅配偶。
Wild dogs are the most successful hunters in Africa, with a kill rate of 80 percent. Lions, by comparison, kill just 30 percent of what they hunt. The dogs’ superpower is also part of the reason they are so threatened. Owners of many private game reserves would rather kill them than lose expensive game. Subsistence farmers feel the same way about their livestock. A 2021 study published in Ecology and Evolution showed that human causes—including direct killing and diseases from domestic dogs—accounted for 44 percent of all wild dog deaths at study sites in Kenya, Botswana and Zimbabwe over a 15-year period. A lack of continuity between areas where the dogs are welcome means that without intervention, they struggle to find mates.
但非洲最遭恨的食肉动物亦有可爱之处。研究者最津津乐道的莫过于其顽皮天性——博茨瓦纳野犬专家布里安娜·亚伯拉罕曾目睹幼犬”像踢足球般拨弄象粪球”。澳大利亚新南威尔士大学生物学家尼尔·乔丹发现，野犬是地球上少数会”投票”的物种：狩猎前会举行”集会”，成员们以卷舌吠叫、假意捕猎等行为表决，最终以集体喷嚏作为出发信号。它们还允许幼犬优先进食（动物界罕见），并会为伤病或临产同伴反刍食物。
But there is much to love about the most hated carnivore in Africa. Ask a wild dog enthusiast what they enjoy the most, and they will likely say it is the dogs’ playfulness. Briana Abrahms, who researches wild dogs in Botswana, has seen the pups “bat around balls of elephant dung like a football.” Neil Jordan, a biologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, discovered that wild dogs are one of the few species on Earth that appear to vote. Before departing on a hunt, the animals hold “rallies”: At dusk, one or two will stand up after resting in the heat and pull their ears back, pretending to stalk prey. They’ll make strange, strangled barks and chittering noises, curling their tongues, playing with one another and urinating.
“And then they kind of snowball socially, so then more get involved, and more get involved. It’s like a big merry-go-round, and they’re all running around crazy,” Jordan says. Typically they’ll do this once, then lie back down, then again, then lie back down. Only when they emit “rapid nasal exhalations,” or sneezes, will they actually depart. (“We still don’t know for sure whether the dogs are using that, or it just happens to be occurring around the same time as they’re signaling their intention to move in another way,” Jordan emphasizes.) Wild dogs also allow their pups to feed first, near-unique behavior among animals, says Jordan. When a member of the pack is injured or sick or heavily pregnant and can’t join a hunt, another dog will regurgitate food for it. Wild dogs look out for one another.
当三姐妹在卡车中酣睡时，笔者与EWT现场负责人尤金·格雷林格在附近小屋落座。我们身处韦尔杰冯登保护区入口——那里建有野犬临时居所。
While the sisters doze in the trucks, I take a seat in a hut nearby with Eugene Greyling, one of the EWT field officers transporting the dogs. We’re sitting at the entrance to the Welgevonden Game Reserve, which houses the enclosure that will temporarily contain the dogs.