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African Wild Dog
The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) is a canid native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest indigenous canid in Africa, and the only extant member of the genus Lycaon, which is distinguished from Canis by dentition highly specialised for a hypercarnivorous diet, and a lack of dewclaws. It was classified as endangered by the IUCN in 2016, as it had disappeared from much of its original range. The last official assessment was carried out in 2012 and the population was estimated at 39 subpopulations containing 6,600 adults, of which 1,400 were reproductive. The population of mature adults as per the IUCN in 2020, is 1409. The decline of these populations is ongoing, due to habitat fragmentation, human persecution and disease outbreaks.
The evolution of the African wild dog is poorly understood due to the scarcity of fossil finds. Some authors consider the extinct Canis subgenus Xenocyon as ancestral to both the genus Lycaon and the genus Cuon, which lived throughout Eurasia and Africa from the Early Pleistocene to the early Middle Pleistocene.