The Key To Protecting Endangered African Wild Dogs Might Just Be … Their Own Pee

<p><a class="redactor-added-link" href="http://gemini.no/en/2014/06/saving-africas-wily-wild-dogs-with-pee/">Photo: Craig R. Jackson</a><br></p>
<p><a class="redactor-added-link" href="http://gemini.no/en/2014/06/saving-africas-wily-wild-dogs-with-pee/">Photo: Craig R. Jackson</a><br></p>

Conservationists want to build better barriers to protect African wild dogs -- but, instead of metal or wood fences, they're trying to craft biological blockades. The trick? Wild dog urine.

The pee of another pack acts as a chemical "Keep Out!" sign to territorial African wild dogs. By spreading the urine around protected wildlife areas, biologists hope that these dogs will stay away from dangerous areas.

Wild dogs -- which aren't feral versions of domesticated pups but a distinct species -- have a bad reputation as livestock predators. As a result, farmers who feel their livelihoods are threatened will shoot or poison the dogs. Across the African continent, there are fewer than 5,000 African wild dogs left, a decrease of almost 99 percent over the past century.

To help the dogs that remain, scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have gathered pee-soaked sand and placed it along the border of protected wild dog territory. The odorous obstacle worked. "We found that the scent marks from foreign packs kept the wild dogs from moving into those areas," says biologist Craig R. Jackson, in a press release.

[Craig Jackson]

The dream of a urine-based boundary has been almost two decades in the making. As Scientific American reports:

In 1996 J. Weldon "Tico" McNutt, director of the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust noticed that it took a pack of dogs six months to move into a territory in Okavango that was left empty after four packs there were wiped out by rabies. He speculated that long-lasting chemicals in their urine and feces discouraged the dogs from entering those former territories.

Now that scientists have shown that wild dogs will stay away from pee, there's another hurdle to clear: "The problem is not to spreading the urine around. The problem is collecting it," Jackson says.

But McNutt -- the whiz behind the wizz -- believes that artificial urine could work. To that end, he's enlisted a team of chemists to decipher the compounds that comprise wild dog urine, in the hopes that fake pee could one day keep wild dogs safe.