Atelocynus microtis (Sclater, 1883)

Voss, Robert S. & Fleck, David W., 2017, Mammalian Diversity And Matses Ethnomammalogy In Amazonian Peru Part 2: Xenarthra, Carnivora, Perissodactyla, Artiodactyla, And Sirenia, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2017 (417), pp. 1-1 : 1-

Atelocynus microtis (Sclater, 1883)

Figures 12A , 13A

VOUCHER MATERIAL: None.

OTHER INTERFLUVIAL RECORDS: Quebrada Pobreza ( Escobedo-Torres, 2015), Río Yavarí (Salovaara et al., 2003), Río Yavarí-Mirím (Salovaara et al., 2003), San Pedro (Valqui, 1999).

IDENTIFICATION: The short-eared dog is unmistakable in external appearance ( Emmons, 1997), so sight records from competent observers are reliable evidence for local occurrence. There is, additionally, a published camera-trap photograph of this species from Quebrada Pobreza (Pitman et al., 2015: fig. 10S).

ETHNOBIOLOGY: Few Matses have ever seen the short-eared dog, which is either called mayanën opa (“demon’s dog”) or nimëduk opa (“jungle dog”). These are never considered synonyms; rather, there is intervillage variation whereby one of the names is used and the other is considered incorrect. Short-eared dogs are sometimes confused with jaguarundis, some informants believing them to be the same species. Some Matses comment that they would seem to make nice pets, but they are never raised as such.

Touching or even looking at a short-eared dog is likely to make one’s children ill with high fever and intense thirst. As with most very rare animals, an encounter with a short-eared dog is interpreted as an omen that someone in the person’s village or a close relative will soon die.

MATSES NATURAL HISTORY: Short-eared dogs look very much like domestic dogs, but with small ears. One can easily mistake one for a domestic dog. Their footprints are like a dog’s footprints.

Short-eared dogs are found in all habitats. They frequent mineral licks to look for prey, and frequent palm swamps to eat swamp-palm (Mau- ritia flexuosa [ Arecaceae ]) fruits, and to look for game. They den in hollow logs, holes in the ground, or undercut banks of streams. They are diurnal and are most commonly encountered in pairs or groups of three, but they are also frequently solitary. They give birth to as many as three pups, which may be found abandoned in their dens (in hollow logs or holes in the ground), presumably while the mother is out hunting. (According to one informant, the inside of the hollow log in which pups were found was scraped smooth.) They whine and snarl. They do not bark like domestic dogs.

Short-eared dogs eat pacas, agoutis, acouchies, and spiny rats, which they chase down or dig out of their burrows or nests. They also eat grounddwelling birds like white-throated tinamous, wood-quails, and trumpeters. They dig jungle frogs out of their burrows. They eat bata tree ( Pseudolmedia spp. and? Maquira spp. [ Moraceae ]) fruits and the mesocarp of swamp-palm ( Mauritia flexuosa ) fruits.

REMARKS: Short-eared dogs are among the least known of all canid species, and even the Matses have little to say about them. Most of the natural history observations in the interviews we

compiled about this species agree with the literature reviewed by Pitman and Williams (2004), notably with respect to diurnality, denning sites, and diet. However, whereas those authors reported fish to be the most frequent item found in short-eared dog scat from their study site in southern Peru, the Matses do not mention fish among the items consumed by Atelocynus in the Yavari-Ucayali interfluve, where only terrestrial prey and fruit are said to be eaten. The Matses observation that short-eared dogs eat the fruit of Mauritia flexuosa (not mentioned as a food plant by Pitman and Williams, 2004) is corroborated by a recent report based on a camera-trap survey at a Colombian locality by Acevedo-Quintero and Zamora-Abrego (2016).

Figures

FIG. 12. Dorsal views of adult skulls of Atelocynus microtis (A, AMNH 98639) and Speothos venaticus (B, AMNH 98560). Both specimens are from northeastern Peru, but neither is from the Yavarí-Ucayali interfluve.

FIG. 13. Ventral views of adult skulls of Atelocynus microtis (A, AMNH 98639) and Speothos venaticus (B, AMNH 98560). Note the absence of M2 in Speothos.