Three male African wild dog litter mates in Zambia traveled 4,126 km in nine months after leaving their birth pack in Kafue National Park. Matt Becker of the Zambian Carnivore Programme said the route set a record for the longest African mammal movement on record.
The Mayukuyuku males left in mid-2025 and reached a game management area between South Luangwa and Lower Zambezi by April 2026. Becker said, “It’s the longest African mammal movement on record, and the longest [recorded] wild dog dispersal.”
Kafue National Park to the Luangwa River Valley
Researchers tracked 19 wild dog groups with GPS collars fitted to individual animals. The study found all 19 groups moved within or around 7 national parks in Zambia, and four groups separately reached within a few kilometers of Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, and Zimbabwe.
The Mayukuyuku males moved east out of Kafue National Park, then north toward Kitwe and Ndola, then doubled back before heading east toward the Luangwa River Valley. That valley has about 400 wild dogs, giving the route an endpoint inside a larger connected landscape rather than at the edge of a single reserve.
EWD-1355 and the snare loss
The record trek did not stand alone. A female wild dog nicknamed EWD-1355 traveled more than 2,300 km with her two sisters from South Luangwa in 2021 before she was killed in a hunter's snare in a game management area in southern Zambia.
Becker said of the Mayukuyuku males, “We think they’ve actually established a [territorial] range, but we haven’t quantified who they’re with and how many dogs there are.” Nyambe Nyambe of the secretariat governing the KAZA Transfrontier Conservation Area said, “If we conserve and continue to improve these connections, a lot of species like wild dogs can make the rest happen.”
Southern Africa and Eastern Africa
The study places the movement inside a much wider pattern. Researchers previously recorded similar wild dog migrations in Botswana, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, showing that long dispersals can link populations across Southern Africa and Eastern Africa when corridors remain open. For conservation work, the practical question is whether those links stay passable long enough for packs to settle, breed, and keep moving between protected areas and surrounding landscapes.
