Three African wild dog brothers complete longest mammal journey ever recorded

Three African wild dog brothers have completed the longest single journey ever recorded by any mammal on the African continent. The three brothers covered 4,126 kilometres across southern Africa, a distance that represents not just a remarkable feat of endurance but a crucial piece of evidence about how wildlife can still move through landscapes increasingly dominated by human infrastructure and settlement.

The journey began when the dogs dispersed from their birth litter, a one-way movement distinct from seasonal migration or nomadic roaming. They were searching for mates and new territory, a biological imperative that has shaped wild dog survival for millennia. What made this particular dispersal extraordinary was not only the total distance travelled but the straight-line distance of 546 kilometres they covered as the crow flies—both records for African mammals. The research team, led by Professor Scott Creel of Montana State University, tracked the dogs using GPS collars as part of a larger study by the Zambian Carnivore Programme working with the Zambian Department of National Parks and Wildlife and conservation partners including The Nature Conservancy.

The route these three brothers took was a masterclass in persistence through hostile terrain. They repeatedly climbed and descended the Great Rift Valley escarpment, crossed major rivers and roads, skirted around cities and lakes, and passed through Zambia's heavily industrialised Copperbelt mining region. Their journey took them into or near five neighbouring countries—Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi among them. The landscape they crossed was not wilderness. It was fragmented, developed, and filled with barriers that would have stopped most animals. Yet they kept moving.

The study tracked 19 groups of African wild dogs as they dispersed across thousands of kilometres of Zambia and beyond. The species, also known as painted dogs and listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, now numbers around 6,600 adults across 39 distinct populations on the continent. They are among Africa's widest-ranging carnivores, living in highly social packs and dependent on movement between different populations for long-term survival. The threats they face are relentless: habitat fragmentation from farms, mines, roads, towns and cities; declining numbers of natural prey; bushmeat snares; disease; and direct conflict with people.

Not all the dogs in the study survived their journeys. Some were killed in bushmeat snares, with some having travelled more than 2,000 kilometres before being caught. The cost of these long-distance movements is real and measured in lives. Yet the study, published in the journal Ecology, demonstrates something conservationists had begun to doubt: that large wild animals can still move through increasingly human-dominated landscapes to reach protected areas. The finding that African wild dog populations in Eastern and Southern Africa appear to still be connected—that the natural movements necessary to maintain healthy populations are still possible—offers a different kind of hope.

Professor Creel expressed his excitement not merely about the distance but about what it represented. The dogs had completed a movement between the Kafue and Luangwa ecosystems, crossing an area with a strong human footprint, few protected places, and numerous barriers including cities, roads, and reservoirs. Despite being diverted several times, they persisted. The research reveals where animals can still move successfully between existing protected landscapes, information that can now guide governments and conservation organisations toward focusing on wildlife corridors, pathways, and buffer zones rather than treating national parks as isolated islands.

Almost 40 percent of Zambia is under some form of nature conservation designation, and the new findings suggest that these efforts are working. The connectivity between populations across the country and into adjacent nations indicates that the landscape-based approach to conservation—working with communities on lands surrounding national parks and maintaining the corridors between them—is yielding results. As Creel noted, wild dogs can still connect all the populations across the entire country and at least some parts of adjacent nations. That connectivity, maintained through the persistence of three brothers and the dedication of researchers tracking their every movement, may be the difference between survival and extinction for a species that has already lost so much ground.