Three brothers, 4,126 kilometres and a remarkable journey across Zambia. Some fascinating new research has revealed just how far African wild dogs will travel when it's time to leave home.
One of the interesting things about following African wild dogs over the years is how quickly the composition of a familiar pack can change. Animals you've become accustomed to seeing suddenly disappear, sometimes individually, sometimes in small groups. Occasionally they turn up elsewhere, but often you never discover what became of them.
Three brothers with somewhere to go. But where?
In July 2025, four three-year-old females left the Mayukuyuku pack in Kafue National Park. Two weeks later, three of their brothers followed.
This wasn't particularly unusual behaviour. African wild dogs generally have a dominant breeding pair, and young adults commonly disperse to find unrelated mates and establish new packs. Staying with their original family offers limited opportunities to breed, particularly when several siblings of similar age are competing for the same opportunities.
What happened next, however, was anything but ordinary.
The three brothers began travelling eastwards out of Kafue, crossing increasingly populated parts of Zambia. Their route took them north towards the Copperbelt, navigating around the outskirts of Kitwe and Ndola before turning south again.
At one point, they retraced approximately 200 kilometres of their earlier route. They avoided major settlements, crossed roads, travelled through areas with little formal wildlife protection and eventually headed east towards the Luangwa Valley.
By April 2026, after approximately nine months of travelling, the three males had covered 4,126 kilometres.
To put that into perspective, this wasn't the distance between where they started and finished. It was the accumulated distance of all their movements, detours and changes of direction.
It is the longest dispersal journey yet recorded for an African mammal.
And all of this from three animals simply trying to find an opportunity to breed.
They weren't the only ones travelling
The researchers were also following the movements of the four sisters that had left the same Kafue pack.
Remarkably, the brothers and sisters encountered one another again near the Copperbelt after each group had already travelled more than a thousand kilometres. They separated after a day and continued their journeys.
The sisters' story, unfortunately, was considerably less encouraging.
Their movements eventually brought them into an area near Kabwe where wire snares were being used for illegal hunting. Researchers believe at least one of the females became caught, while another, wearing a tracking collar, subsequently died, probably in a snare. The fate of the remaining sister is unknown.
It's a sobering reminder of the risks these animals face once they move beyond the relative protection of national parks.
Wild dogs are particularly vulnerable to snares. Their strong social bonds mean that packmates may remain with an injured animal rather than simply abandoning it, sometimes exposing several dogs to the same danger.
And snaring is only one of the challenges. Roads, settlement, depleted prey populations and conflict with people can all make dispersal hazardous.
The remarkable ability to navigate
One of the more fascinating findings concerns how wild dogs move through unfamiliar and sometimes unsuitable country.
Researchers have found that when dogs enter areas with greater human activity, their movements often become faster and more direct. They appear remarkably capable of navigating around settlements, major roads and other obstacles.
The Mayukuyuku brothers provided some extraordinary examples, including finding their way around large reservoirs and retracing previous routes over considerable distances.
But locating other wild dogs is another matter.
During their journey, the three males passed within just a few kilometres of females that had dispersed from South Luangwa. Their routes came tantalisingly close, yet the groups did not successfully establish themselves together.
By April 2026, the brothers had settled into a new range in the Luano Game Management Area, within the wider Luangwa Valley ecosystem. Whether they had successfully joined unrelated females and established a breeding pack had not yet been confirmed.
That distinction is important. An animal travelling between two distant wildlife areas doesn't automatically mean those populations have become genetically connected.
For that to happen, dispersing animals must survive, find suitable mates and successfully reproduce.
What this tells us about Zambia's wild dogs
For anyone familiar with Zambia's great wildlife areas, perhaps the most interesting conclusion is that wild dogs are still capable of moving between ecosystems we tend to regard as quite separate.
Kafue, the Luangwa Valley, Lower Zambezi and other protected areas may be separated by considerable distances, farms, settlements and major roads, but the wildlife doesn't necessarily recognise those boundaries in the way we do.
The research, published in September 2026, was undertaken by the Zambian Carnivore Programme, Zambia's Department of National Parks and Wildlife and a number of conservation partners, including Musekese Conservation.
It draws on years of monitoring and GPS tracking and reveals movements involving wild dogs travelling through or close to several of Zambia's major wildlife ecosystems.
There is some encouraging news here. The connections between these landscapes haven't entirely disappeared.
But there is also a warning.
The land between national parks matters enormously. Game Management Areas, forest reserves, community land and relatively undeveloped corridors may provide the routes through which animals can move between otherwise isolated populations.
As these areas become increasingly fragmented, the opportunities for successful dispersal diminish.
And for a species such as the African wild dog, whose survival depends partly on young animals being able to leave their birth packs and establish new ones, that is a serious consideration.
So, where have the wild dogs gone?
The next time a familiar wild dog disappears from a pack, it's worth remembering that there may be considerably more to the story than we realise.
Some will have moved only a relatively short distance. Others may be searching for unrelated animals many hundreds of kilometres away. And a few, as the Mayukuyuku brothers have demonstrated, may undertake journeys that are almost difficult to believe.
Not every disappearance is a dispersal, of course, and many animals never survive the attempt. But the remarkable movements recorded by these researchers give us a much better understanding of what may be happening beyond the areas we regularly visit.
I find it rather encouraging that, despite all the pressures on Africa's wildlife and the increasing fragmentation of its habitats, these animals are still capable of such extraordinary journeys.
The challenge now is to ensure that they have somewhere safe to go.
And, ideally, someone suitable to meet when they get there.
This article draws on research published in September 2026 in the scientific journal Ecology: “Extraordinary movements connecting distant ecosystems by African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus)”, by Scott Creel and colleagues, including researchers from the Zambian Carnivore Programme, Musekese Conservation and other partners. Check out this great video from Z C P. and dont forget you can donate to support their work
