New Guinea singing dogs still roam the wilderness
These cuties are wild, elusive, and quite musically talented. (new guinea highland wild dog foundation, inc/)When zoology field researcher James McIntyre saw fresh dog prints stomped into the mud of the cool, rainy landscape of Papua New Guinea in 2016, he squealed like a small child. The elusive wild dogs of the Pacific island hadn’t been captured since the 1980s, and the only proof that they were still around was in one photo captured by an adventure guide in 2012.“They are one of the very few remnant populations of wild dogs on the planet,” he says.McIntyre, now founder and president of the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation, took an interest in the mysterious dogs back in the 1990s while studying intersex pigs in Papua New Guinea. While traveling in the area for research, he could hear the howls of the creatures but never met eye-to-eye with one. Still, for...