We came across a pack of Wild Dogs at rest in Zambia's South Luangwa National Park, which is currently host to several breeding packs. It turned out that they were trying to relax after a successful hunt. They have a great success rate in their hunts which are savage affairs: The prey is usually chased to exhaustion and devoured on the spot within minutes. With good reason, because their hunts are usually shadowed by packs of hyenas hoping to steal their kills. Most successful hunts are followed by vicious fights with hyenas, which are bigger and stronger than the delicately built dogs. You can see the blood from the kill, and the wound from the hyena fight on the face of this young dog who approached our vehicle to investigate us. African Wild Dogs are neither wolves nor dogs, despite their common English names, and the fact that their scientific name, Lycaeon pictus, translates to 'painted wolf'. Like wolves and dogs, African wild dogs do belong to the Canidae family. However, grey wolves, coyotes, dogs and jackals are all in the Canis genus, whereas African wild dogs are the only extant species in the Lycaeon genus. African wild dogs are found in a number of sub-Saharan Africa, including Botswana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. African wild dogs are listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List due to a range of factors including habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, being caught in snares as bycatch by poachers hunting for bushmeat, and infectious diseases like canine distemper and rabies. Despite their sucecss rate in hunting, there are fewer 6,000 individuals are left in the wild, forming fewer than 700 packs.