Africa’s top dog is back in town. Vaccinating domestic dogs against rabies has allowed the highly endangered African wild dog to make a comeback in the Serengeti game reserve in Tanzania.
The wild dog (Lycaon pictus) became extinct in the park in 1991 when an epidemic of canine rabies struck a population already ravaged by competition with lions and hyenas. The wild dogs are such a social species that when one individual becomes infected its whole pack is likely to be wiped out.
In 1997, Sarah Cleaveland of the University of Edinburgh, UK, started to vaccinate farmers’ dogs in the…
