Short-eared Dog

The Short-eared Dog is notoriously rare, and sightings are uncommon across its range. However, this may not always have been the case. The first biologists to study the species found it relatively easy to trap during mammal surveys around Balta, Amazonian Peru, in 1969 (A.L. Gardner and J.L. Patton pers. comm.). Grimwood (1969) reported collecting specimens around the same time in Peru's Manu basin (now Manu National Park), suggesting that the species was also relatively common in that area.

Following these reports, the species went practically unrecorded in the Peruvian Amazon until 1987, despite intensive, long-term field surveys of mammals in the intervening years (Terborgh et al. 1984; Janson and Emmons 1990; Woodman et al. 1991; Pacheco et al. 1993, 1995). Even Louise Emmons, who carried out long-term monitoring and trapping of Ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and other mammals at the Cocha Cashu Biological Station in Manu, never saw or trapped the Short-eared Dog (L. Emmons pers. comm. 2008). For whatever reason, the species appears to have gone entirely unrecorded from the region between 1970 and 1987.

This local and temporary disappearance is potentially related to transmission of diseases by domestic dogs, commonly brought by local indigenous into protected areas. Two disease surveys carried out in Manu National Park found parvovirus and distemper to be common among domestic dogs, posing a threat to Short-eared Dog populations and other carnivores inside Manu and Alto Purus National Park (Schenck et al. 1997; Leite Pitman, Nieto et al. 2003).

Over the last two decades, it appears that the species population may be recovering in some areas, with increasing numbers of sightings in recent years, but which also certainly reflects a greater number of biologists and tourists in the region and improvements in detection technology such as the use of camera-traps. Between 1987 and 1999, biologists working in the Peruvian department of Madre de Dios, mostly in the vicinity of Cocha Cashu Biological Station, reported 15 Short-eared Dog sightings. Surveys in Cocha Cashu conducted from 2000–2003 resulted in a few brief encounters, while surveys around the Curanja and Purus rivers found tracks in every creek visited (M.R.P. Leite Pitman pers. obs.). From 2003 to date, more than 100 camera-trap pictures of this species have been recorded at Los Amigos Biological Station, also in south-eastern Peru (M.R.P. Leite Pitman pers. obs.). The species has also been recorded by camera traps in northern Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and western and eastern Brazil.