449 

 THE INDIAN WILD DOG. 



{Ci/on dukhunensis.^ 



By J. D. Inverarity. 



(With a Plate.) 



(Read before The Bombay Natural History Society, on 11th April, 1896.') 



The wild dog is the type of a separate genus, and differs in some 

 remarkable respects from the Canidce. 



In its dentation it differs, as it wants the second tubercular behind 

 the flesh tooth in the lower jaw. 



The number of mammae are also in excess of those of the members of 

 the dog tribe. 



The wild dog, though common enough, is not very often seen, 

 and any individual sportsman's experience of the animal is limited. 

 Mr. Littledale has collected together from various sources information 

 about the wild dog in a paper published in this Society's Journal, 

 Vol. VII, page 494, and there is also an interesting reprint of a paper 

 on the same subject in Vol. VII, page 127. 



I will therefore not go over the same ground again, but confine this 

 paper to some personal experiences of my own. The photograph is 

 that of a female shot by Mr. N. C. Macleod on 3rd June, 1895. She 

 measured in length 4 feet 4 inches from nose to the tip of the tail, of 

 which the tail measured 17 inches, her height at the shoulder was 

 19^ inches. She had 14 mammse, 8 on the left side and 6 on the right. 



I first saw her early on the morning of 29th May, 1895, when I was 

 engaged investigating the bed of a nullah lor the tracks of any tiger 

 that might have passed that way. Something moving attracted my 

 eye, and I saw the dog walking along in the jungle close to the nullah 

 not more than 20 yards off. A few yards behind her was a half-grown 

 young one. They did not see me. I had left my rifle at a tree where 

 I had spent the night over a " gara," and on my trying to creep back to 

 the spot in order that I might be in a position to murder them, they 

 saw me and bolted away across the nullah, the young one in its haste 

 jumping into the water which the old one leapt over. 



On the 1st June, 1895, Macleod and myself were walking up a nullah, 

 looking for tiger at 4 p.m., 6 miles distant from the spot where I first saw 

 them, when the old dog and her young one were seen by us drinking at 

 a pool. On seeing us they retreated into the jungle and afterwards crossed 

 the nullah at a slow pace. At dawn of June Srd, Macleod who had been 



