The Mysterious Ghost Dog: It has a stronger smell than a fox, short ears, fingers like a duck’s, and they caught one alive

Elusive and enigmatic. This is how they describe the ghost dog, a specimen that is attracting attention in Bolivia, from which the video showing one of these animals “caught alive” has gone viral.

The so-called “ghost dog” was seen in the Beni department as it wandered around the campus of the Autonomous University of Beni (UAB), in the city of Trinidad, that country’s Environmental News Agency reported March 9. .

The video recording made it possible, in February of this 2023, Ernesto Carlos Balderrama Torrico, an agronomist engineer.

How’s the ghost dog

The ghost dog is also called the Amazon dog. Scientifically it is Atelocynus microtis.

In describing it, the Bolivian Environmental News Agency explains, “it barks, it has a peculiar ‘jump’ when walking.”

Between the toes of his duck-like feet is a membrane that makes him an excellent swimmer.

In addition, this animal has a distinctive stamp that makes it more attractive to science: “it has a strong characteristic smell, stronger than that of the porcupine, stronger than that of the fox itself, it is more sour.”

It feeds on small mammals, fish, fruits and reptiles, Infobae reported.

The ghost dog, taken in by the agronomist, was captured with the help of Julio César Yabeta, a student of veterinary medicine, environmentalists and firefighters. Yabeta said this was a great experience.

The specific animal is estimated to be between 7 and 8 months old.

Its habitat is the jungles and Amazon region of Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador.

This animal has solitary and nocturnal habits, and its body has special features: fox snout, thick tail and webbed feet, El Tiempo added.

science is celebrating

The ghost dog had DNA testing.

“It is the first collection of a dog from the Amazon region in Bolivia, the first rescue; Neither the Santa Cruz Zoo nor any of the Bolivian bioparks have this specimen,” said Dr. Marco Greminger Céspedes of the ghost dog.

Among vets, there’s a kind of “fascination”: “They’re very strange and hard to see,” says veterinarian and ecologist Renata Leite Pitman, a Duke University researcher and grant recipient, as quoted in the Bolivian Environmental News Agency. National Geographic scholarship.

The specialist “has been studying the short-eared dog, which lives only in the Amazon region, for 14 years. In that time he caught five animals, put collars on them (…) They are very shy, completely different from pets,” he explained.