No Such Thing As Bad Publicity?

There is one inherent difficulty in using stories and popular culture to teach visitors about animals.  In much local folklore and culture, the animals themselves are not portrayed too kindly.  Sometimes, the association of an animal's status in culture is a very negative one, which can have significant impact on its conservation status and efforts to preserve it.

Consider the dhole - a pack-hunting Asian wild dog.

Last year, I was speaking with the curator of another zoo, commiserating over the pounds and pounds of paperwork that were needed to transport or import species that could potentially become invasive to our environment.  We were going over the list of species that the Fish and Wildlife Service has listed as potential invasives - anacondas, meerkats, flying foxes... and dhole.  I'd always wondered about that, and I asked him.  What made the government so concerned about dholes getting loose in America and destroying the America?

"I don't know," he replied after a while.  "Someone must have read too much Kipling."

Rudyard Kipling is best known as the author of The Jungle Book, the tales of the man-cub Mowgli and his upbringing in the jungles of India.  The characters of Baloo and Bagheera, Kaa and Shere Khan are well known to many readers.  One of the less-known stories from the work is Red Dog, when Mowgli's adopted wolf family must fight to defend their home from a fierce outside invader.

"The dhole, the dhole of Dekkan - Red Dog, the Killer!  They came north from the south saying the Dekkan was empty and killing out by the way.  When this moon was new there were four to me - my mate and three cubs... At the dawn-wind I found them stiff in the grass - four, Free People, four when this moon was new  Then I sought my Blood-Right and found the dhole."

To the British colonial authorities of India, the dhole was perceived as a vicious killer, one deserving of no compassion and no conservation status.  In fact, it was believed that the best way to conserve wildlife in some areas was to exterminate the dhole - they were seen as beasts that would kill wantonly, destroying all the animals that they could catch and chasing the rest clear out of the region.  A similar prejudice was based across the ocean against the African wild dog.

Compared to most of the large carnivores of Asia - the bears and the big cats - the dhole is largely ignored, with few large-scale plans for its conservation.  There is no international "Save the Dhole" movement, no popular documentaries, no organizations using them as their logos.  I have a hard time coming up with any other explanation for this apathy/indifference other than the dhole's bad press.  Few people have heard of it, and of those who have, fewer still like what they have heard.

Very few American zoos house dholes - I have only seen them once, myself.  I found them to be gorgeous, engaging animals, full of activity, bustling with curiosity.  They are intensely social and devoted to one another - the picture I took above is the one moment I was able to get one off by itself.  It was a meeting that I had long been looking forward to - I had heard of dholes, but had never gotten the chance to observe one before.  It made me said to realize that so few people would get the chance to meet or experience these beautiful animals, all as a result of a chapter in a work of a fiction.