- Avantika Deep Sharma
Nestled amidst the lush green forest of Anamalai hills, Valparai is a labyrinth of tea, coffee, and rainforest patches where sighting wild animals is fairly common. While the landscape is a haven for birds and butterflies, the tea-dominated plateau may also surprise one with glimpses of megafauna like elephants, sambar deer, gaurs, and, if luck favours, even leopards.
Early last year, towards the end of winter, I landed in Valparai to initiate my study on the elusive dholes–– Asiatic wild dogs. Dholes are pack-living wild canids that mostly live in the forests of south and southeast Asia. But Valparai is a unique landscape where these wild dogs have learnt to co-habit tea and coffee plantations and live alongside people.
It was my first field day of field work. My colleague Sabiya Sheikh, who had begun her own fieldwork just a few weeks earlier, had established a network of local informants who were tasked with notifying us of any dhole encounters in the landscape. As chance would have it, the morning of my very first day on field, we got a phone call from one of our informants about a dhole sighting in one of the tea plantations.
Following the informant’s lead, we rode through the tea estate along with our field assistants. Our informant was right; we found the dhole pack resting on a mud trail. The pack had around twelve adults and eight pups. We observed them from a vantage point atop a small hill. It was such a marvellous sight to see the pups––seemingly carefree––engage in all sorts of antics, even as the adults appeared to be disciplining them whilst keeping an eye out for any potential dangers. As the day progressed and the temperature soared, the pack gradually moved into the bushes of the adjacent tea field. We also decided to take a break and return around late afternoon, hoping that they might come out and provide us with more observations.
Later in the day, we returned to the same location but found no sign of the pack. Concluding that the dholes might have moved elsewhere, we were also about to leave. It was then that we heard some rustling in the nearby bushes. To our surprise, a dhole pup emerged from the thicket. It was so unexpected that all of us, including the pup, froze in our respective spots. The pup stood, perplexed, at less than three meters from us. Its ears and eyes drooped, and it took a few steps back but did not run away. I exchanged looks with Sabiya; we equal parts surprised and tempted to pick up and cuddle the adorable pup.
While all of us were still processing the situation, the rest of the pack realised that some humans had gotten a little too close to their pup. They rushed towards us and surrounded the spot, with a few of them giving their characteristic alarm call–– if you can imagine a loud cackling noise interspersed with a discomforting gurgling sound. As the pack members started growling, we decided to back off immediately and move away. The pup also rushed back to the safety of its pack.
I recall them keeping a close eye on us until we were fully out of their sight. The entire ordeal culminated into my first eventful field day, leaving me with a fantastic experience and a dhole lot of adrenaline. It also set the tone for several such endearing encounters and ecological discoveries over the next 15 months–– but that is a story for another time.