It was at the crack of dawn when I was notified about a young female nyala antelope just standing in the middle of the shallow river in front of our safari camp. This was unusual behavior, and I have only ever witnessed such behavior two times before in my life. On both those occasions, there was only one reason for such unusual behavior: African wild dogs!
I quickly grabbed my camera and ran down to the front of the safari camp where there was a clear view of the shallow river in the front. In my mind I thought that only African wild dogs have the ability to scare something so much that it goes and stand in the middle of the cold water, alone, so early on a winter morning. I got to the front of the camp, and sure thing, there they were. A small pack of African wild dogs attempting to hunt down this female nyala antelope standing in the middle of the river. Prey animals sometimes run for the water in attempt to escape the land onslaught of a whole hunting pack of wild dogs. African wild dogs on the other hand, hunting in packs, are very strategic and extremely successful, no matter what the situation or conditions. Listed among some of Africa’s rarest carnivores, these skillful predators almost never miss a hunting attempt as a pack. While African wild dogs really do not like swimming, they were clearly driven by hunger with sheer determination. A few of the wild dogs took the plunge and went after the antelope in the water while the rest of the pack was split along both sides of the riverbank. It was just unreal to see how badly the antelope wanted to get away and at the same time how badly the wild dogs wanted to hunt down their prey. The wild dogs didn’t give up and after one tenacious wild dog hanged on ferociously, the rest of the pack quickly joined to help. African wild dogs are also very aware of the dangers of crocodiles in rivers, so in a flash, the pack pulled their kill out the water into the bush, disappearing out of the scene. All of this craziness played off for just over a minute before the dogs disappeared into the bush with the kill and the whole scene in front of camp went back to dead quiet and normal, as if nothing happened.