Researchers Find Amazon 'Ghost Dog' at 15 per 38.61 Square Miles After 25 Years

Q: Why does the Amazon's web-footed 'ghost dog' avoid the rivers it seems perfectly adapted for?

It avoids rivers because it is not a river specialist at all, but a forest specialist. The new camera-trap study found the short-eared dog is most strongly associated with dense, mature upland Amazon forest—terra firme—well away from river edges and other more open transition zones. Its partially webbed paws do not appear to mean it is adapted for living along big waterways. Researchers say the trait may be more useful for moving across the wet, muddy, swampy forest floor, especially in the rainy season, than for a river-centered lifestyle. In other words, the feet may help it handle soggy ground inside the forest rather than draw it to rivers. Robert Wallace and colleagues found the species prefers continuous lowland forest “further inland,” not habitat right next to rivers. That fits the broader picture from 25 years of surveys in Bolivia and Peru: the ghost dog is elusive because it stays in intact interior forest, where its hearing, smell and secretive behavior help it avoid people. The exact evolutionary reason for the webbing is still not fully resolved, and the study does not claim a definitive answer. But the evidence is clear on habitat use: despite its webbed toes, the short-eared dog’s ecology is tied to deep Amazon forest, not riverbanks.

3 articles · Updated · Popular Science · Jun 14

594 camera-trap photos from 34 surveys in Bolivia and Peru show the short-eared dog is far more abundant than researchers had feared, though still not common.
25 years of fieldwork produced an estimated density of 15 dogs per 38.61 square miles, suggesting the elusive canid may outnumber jaguars locally but trail medium-sized carnivores such as ocelots.
6 a.m. to noon is the species' peak activity window, and the study found it favors upland forest far from rivers despite its partially webbed paws.
Protected areas and overlapping Indigenous territories showed higher relative abundance than unprotected land, underscoring habitat protection as central to conserving one of the Amazon's least-known carnivores.