Dhole

The **dhole** (*Cuon alpinus)* is a canid from Asia. Canid means that it is  related to dogs and foxes. It is native to Central, South and Southeast Asia. There are many common names for it: Asiatic wild dog, Indian wild dog, whistling dog, red dog, and mountain wolf.

It is most closely related to species in the genus *Canis* (dogs and wolves),

During the Pleistocene time period, the dhole lived in Asia, Europe and North America, but 12,000–18,000 years ago it died out everywhere except where it lives now.

The dhole lives in big, loosely organised groups with several breeding females. The groups usually have about 12 dholes, but some have over 40. In tropical forests, the dhole competes with tigers and leopards, targeting somewhat different prey species, but still with substantial dietary overlap.

It is listed as Endangered by the IUCN. The population is getting smaller, and there are probably fewer than 2,500 adults left. The reasons for this are lack of habitat, lack of food, competing with other animals, being hunted, and getting diseases from pet dogs. Dholes may still live in the Primorsky Krai province in far eastern Russia, where it was considered a rare and endangered species in 2004. There are unconfirmed sightings of dholes in the Pikthsa-Tigrovy Dom protected forest area. Elsewhere in Russia, no sightings of dholes have been reported since the late 1970s.

Dholes are likely extinct in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

In recent years, one dhole was caught in southern China's Jiangxi district. In 2011 to 2013, local government officials and herders reported the presence of several packs of dholes living in high mountains in the Karakoram region of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Dholes have also recently been seen in the Altun Mountains near Tibet. Dholes occur in small numbers in Gansu Province, with sightings of several packs in 2006 and again in 2013-2014.

Dholes still live in Tibet and possibly also in North Korea.

Dholes live in most of India south of the Ganges River. In northeast India, it is present in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, and West Bengal and in the Indo-Gangetic Plain's Terai region. There are very few dholes in the Himalayas and northwest India. In 2011, dhole packs were recorded by camera traps in the Chitwan National Park.

In Bhutan, dholes were poisoned in the 1970s to protect livestock, but the campaign stopped and the population of dholes increased there in the 1990s.

Dholes still live in northeastern and southeastern Bangladesh. However, most sightings of dholes in Bangladesh are of small groups or single dholes, and the dholes in Bangladesh may not continue to breed for long.

The presence of dholes in Myanmar was confirmed by camera-trapping in 11 areas. In 2015, dholes and tigers were recorded by camera-traps for the first time in the hill forests of Karen State.

There are few large packs of dholes in the Malaysian Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Vietnam and Thailand. In 2014, camera-trap videos in the rainforests on mountains in Sumatra showed dholes continue to live there.

In the 1990s, two Turkish scientists claimed to have seen dholes in northeastern Turkey. Some scientists believe they were true, but others question this claim. Also, one dhole may have been shot in the Caucasus Mountains in 2013; its remains (including a skull) were studied by a biologist in May 2015, who decided the skull was from a dhole. In August 2015, researchers from Sofia, Bulgaria tried to find this population of dholes in Turkey. On October 12, 2015, this research team concluded that there is no clear evidence of dholes continuing to live in Turkey or the Caucasus Mountains.

## In culture and literature 
Dholes were first described in European literature in 1794 by a Russian traveller named Pesterev, who saw dholes during his travels in far eastern Russia. He said that dholes regularly hunt Alpine ibexes in packs, and that it looks like the golden jackal.

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