Inside the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, India, a team of forest staff and researchers did something unusual: instead of scooping up whole piles of wild dog scat, they collected just tiny pinches during the monsoon and winter of 2022–2023. Those few crumbs of dung carried a quiet but powerful secret about one of the world's rarest predators.
The scat belonged to dholes, also called Asiatic wild dogs (Cuon alpinus), a species that has lost roughly 80% of its historic range. Only about 1,000 to 2,000 adults remain on Earth. The study, led by the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru and the Maharashtra Forest Department, set out to learn exactly what these endangered hunters eat.
Their tool of choice was DNA metabarcoding, a technique that pulls genetic material from droppings and matches it against a massive reference database holding information from tens of thousands of species. It's a big upgrade from the old method, called microhistology, which means peering at prey hairs under a microscope. That approach has a flaw, said study co-author and molecular ecologist Abhinav Tyagi: "Different people can categorise hair differently, and it induces a human or an observer's bias." DNA barcoding removes that human error and makes results comparable across studies.
The findings were striking. Dholes feed overwhelmingly on wild herbivores like sambar deer (Rusa unicolor), wild pigs (Sus scrofa), and chital (Axis axis). Livestock made up only a marginal, negligible part of their diet — even in buffer zones where grazing cattle are common. As Tyagi put it, "Irrespective of season, irrespective of area, [their diet] is mostly wild prey."
That matters because it points straight at the best way to help dholes bounce back: protect the wild prey they depend on. "If we increase wild prey density, then dhole populations might come up in numbers," Tyagi said. Arun Tyagi's colleague Arjun Srivathsa, a wildlife biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society – India, noted that dholes "are hypercarnivores and rely substantially on wild prey even when there is domestic livestock available in the landscape."
But there's a delicate balance. Abraham Pious, a researcher who has studied dhole diets in Valparai in southern India, warned that boosting wild herbivore numbers isn't simple — herbivores often raid local crops, which can spark other forms of human-wildlife conflict. His caution rings true: "Conservation should never be at the cost of people who co-exist with the animals."
This study offers a hopeful, clear path forward. By protecting wild prey like sambar and chital, and by working alongside the communities that share the land, India can give its remaining dholes a real chance to grow in number. Sometimes the smallest samples — a pinch of scat here and there — reveal the biggest answers about how to save a species.