From the Corriere della Sera of Milan:
Leopard ‘Salati’ snuggles up beside golden retriever ‘Tommy’ in the back of a 4×4 at the Glen Afric Country Lodge on May 04, 2010 in Pretoria, South Africa. Salati the leopard turns the assumption that dogs love to chase cats on its head by running playfully after Tommy the golden retriever. Animal wrangler Richard Brooker, 23, hand-reared 10-month-old Salati and gives her and family pet dog Tommy their daily exercise together. He takes them out into his family’s 750 hectare estate and lets them run amok, saying “Wherever you see one the other is right behind”. Rescued as an orphaned cub, Salati was donated by a local vet to the family-run country retreat, which helps to rehabilitate injured and needy animals. The Brookers’ hard work and breeding programmes with elephants, lions, and giraffes has helped boost wildlife numbers in the area. (Photo by Matthew Tabaccos/Barcroft Media/Getty Images).
This reminds me of another dog that was used to raise big cats in a preserve in India. Billy Arjan Singh had a pariah dog named Eelie who acted as the foster mother and playmate for several leopards and a tiger cub named Tara.
Tara’s release was a bit controversial, because she was not a “pure” Bengal tiger.
Oh well.
But everyone loves to see photos of dogs with big cats, like this golden who raised some white tiger cubs:
And I’m sure you know of other wonderful examples.
Hat tip to Gary Radice for sending this one along.
The San Diego Zoo had, for many years, a Golden retriever companion for one of its cheetahs. The cat was quite distressed when the Golden died.
The name of the Glen Afric Country Lodge has a bit of a connection with Golden history; the original Glen Affric (or Affaric) in Scotland is located very near to Guisachan, where the first of what was to become the Golden Retriever breed lived and worked; and some of the Guisachan dogs were used on shoots at Glen Affric.
The Zoological Society of San Diego has several captive-born cheetahs working as “animal ambassadors”. They get walked on-leash through the grounds during operating hours – surrounded by running, screaming kids, strollers, disabled people, etc. , and not to mention all of those delicious prey animals! The cats each have their own dog companion.
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/kids/animal_profile_dog-cheetah.html
Their wolves (also walked on-leash through the zoo grounds) have dog companions as well. They had a lion cub at the Wild Animal Park that they were raising by hand (delivered by cesaerian) and he also had a dog as a companion.
BTW it is society policy that (unless required by law, e.g. hot wires around enclosures) that aversives are not used in behavior management or modification. They are clicker trainers that use +R and extinction. There aren’t too many opportunities to use -P on a 11,000 lb wild-born African elephant bull!
It is extremely competitive to get on the ZSSD behavior management staff, and the trainers are all extremely well qualified. Most of the trainers have multiple advanced degrees and a lot of practical experience at other zoos. They have had a lot of success with animals that are considered to be very difficult or impossible to train, including Siberian lynx and spotted hyena. In addition to classical and operant conditioning, they also employ observational & associative learning techniques. However, despite using multiple techniques, there is not a “dominance theory” advocate among them!
Does having dog companions, as do the cheetahs and wolves cited above, infer that the cheetahs and wolves are superior to the dogs?
Which is on which end of the leash?
I think animals will readily learn by example from other animals(even of a different species), and this is why having a well-trained, tractable dog help raise a wild animal can be very useful. When I had my wolf hybrids, I also had a variety of other dogs, and I think seeing how their more domesticated bretheren behave helped teach the wolf dogs “proper”, civilized etiquette. Of course, it can also work the other way, too!!
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Cincinnati Zoo uses dogs as companions for the cheetah cubs they raise, too. They use Anatolian shepherds because their adult size is nearer that of an adult cheetah. They are robust and fast enough to safely interact with the cheetahs both as young cats and as adults..
I thought they used that breed because in Namibia that cheetah conservancy uses Anatolians to guard goats from cheetah predation.
Of course, the dogs get killed by baboons and leopards…
so cute!