Three Wild Dogs Made a Record-Breaking Trek Across Zambia, Traveling More Than 2,500 Miles in Search of Mates

Three male African wild dogs braved predators, rivers and traps to journey a record-breaking 2,500 miles across the continent—the longest movement ever recorded by an African mammal. Their nine-month trek, described in the journal Ecology on September 13, reveals both the threats that these animals face and their resilience in the face of them. They live in highly social pack families, but only the dominant female and male dogs breed within the pack.

So, the other members either wait to become dominant, or they disperse in search of a mate that they can breed with more immediately. Quick fact: African wild dogs are effective predators African wild dogs hunt in packs to bring down large prey. With a success rate of about 80 percent, the canines are among the most precise large predators on Earth.

Scientists attached radio collars to wild dogs from 19 groups, allowing them to paint a picture of the canines’ movements across the continent. The trio of brothers at the center of the study, known as the Mayukuyuku males, started its journey in mid-summer 2025, when the dogs left their home in Zambia’s Kafue National Park and headed eastward into unprotected areas. Just two weeks earlier, four of their sisters had started their own trek, exploring a game management area near their home range.

But the females’ numbers were quickly reduced to three. In September 2025, the siblings briefly reunited in an unprotected area, after the females had traveled 872 miles and the males had traveled nearly 750 miles. Wild dogs, per the paper, have a remarkable ability to locate one another by scent.

The next day, though, the two groups separated again, and the females arrived in a small, forested spot a few weeks later. That’s where their journey would be cut short. One female from the group was collared, and her tracking data showed that she was repeatedly moving back and forth, revisiting the same location.

This is an unusual pattern for wild dogs that’s typically only seen when they have a newborn pup that can’t yet move with the group, or when they’re returning to an injured packmate—wild dogs are extremely reluctant to abandon their injured. The researchers believe one of the packmates was killed by a hunting snare, and the collared female likely suffered a similar fate. All the while, the male dogs continued their journey.