African wild dog vs Belgian Malinois

[lincoln]

Who ya got?

[lincoln]

Hardcastle Bolushi @hammerhead @ling @ajay PumAcinonyx SuperCat  @lbj

[Hardcastle]

This is actually IMO flattering to the mal, based on the fact they say it CAN be 26 inches, most are shorter than that. I found a very tall looking mal and made it max height. The AWD still strikes a rather imposing figure beside it. 

[Deleted]

Jan 27, 2023 18:00:14 GMT Hardcastle said:

This is actually IMO flattering to the mal, based on the fact they say it CAN be 26 inches, most are shorter than that. I found a very tall looking mal and made it max height. The AWD still strikes a rather imposing figure beside it. 

Based on that I favour the AWD.

[Hardcastle]

I can see why, and I'm compelled to agree. The only thing I could argue for the mal is dogs are more combative by nature compared to AWDs. They quarrel and bicker and scuffle more. AWDs really don't "fight", never fight among themselves and don't really fight other things either. Everything is a cooperative tactical assault on a target, so how it would fare in a one on one "dog fight" might interesting. Physically it should be favoured, but mentally MAYBE it would be over-awed. Don't know.

[lincoln]

Jan 27, 2023 18:00:14 GMT Hardcastle said:

This is actually IMO flattering to the mal, based on the fact they say it CAN be 26 inches, most are shorter than that. I found a very tall looking mal and made it max height. The AWD still strikes a rather imposing figure beside it. 

Is this at equal weight? Because they are pretty close in weight range

[Deleted]

Belgian Malinois outfights and overpowers the wild dog and sticks to its neck.

[theundertaker45]

Hardcastle

I looked up the shoulder heights of African wild dogs and "Walker's Mammals of the World" gives a range of 60-75cm. Like with all animals in this book this includes females too; the median shoulder height would therefore be 67.5cm. Thereafter I browsed through "Mammals of Africa" by Kingdon as he normally cites so many nice shoulder height figures but he didn't have any for African wild dogs. So I compared the body length of females and males; it's surprising that males are a bit smaller in dimension than females. In Kruger NP females had a HBL of 126.5cm (weight: 24kg) and males had a HBL of 122.9cm (weight: 28kg); in Kenya females had a HBL of 99.1cm and males had a HB of 98.1cm (weight was the exact same for both genders at ~23kg). The methods of obtaining body length may have been different in the two samples as a 25cm difference between would be unheard of unless we are talking about giants and dwarfes.

This tells me that a male AWD might actually be a bit shorter than a female but bulkier/heavier. I remeasured your comparison and the AWD is roughly 16% taller than the Belgian malinois whereas the actual difference should be closer to 6% in normal adult males. I am sure if you rescale it, it won't look like the AWD is much heavier despite it not being the case.

[Hardcastle]

theundertaker45

Well the AWD should be heavier according to the commonly promoted max weights, 79 lbs vs 65 lbs.
And, I intended to make the AWD 15% taller, based on the 30 inch max for AWDs and 26 inch max for Mals.

Maybe AWDs often fall short of 79 lbs and 30 inches, but I can assure you most Mals fall well short of 26 inches and 65 lbs, also. I was actually very surprised by those figures, having handled many mals up close and personal. Many of which were by my estimation more like 23 inches and 45 lbs- 50 lbs.

So my comparison is a "max size" comparison.

I've seen AWDs side by side with stray street dogs, and based on that I'm convinced an accurate comparison of AWD and Mal will definitely have the AWD towering over the mal, I was expecting it to look actually worse for the mal than my comparison does.

I suspect "average" would probably shrink both to a similar amount and look pretty much the same. Could be wrong. Definitely would be curious to see your take on it.

AWDs have virtually no sexual dimorphism, as far as I understand. Which is interesting, and is attributed to their harmonious and civilised pack dynamics. It's fascinating to me to note Dire Wolves also had no sexual dimorphism, which tells us they were also highly harmonious and organised back animals like AWDs and Dholes, and not like wolves or coyotes.

[Hardcastle]

Also note- wild dogs practically always look heavier than domestic dogs at equal weights.
At equal heights it can be shocking how much heavier an innocuous random herding dog will be than a wild coyote. A 23 inch tall herding dog might weight 50 lbs, a 23 inch coyote will weigh more like 35 lbs or even less. To the eye at a glance you may struggle to see why there should be any difference in weight. Wild dogs have fairly extreme "weight sheering" adaptations to facilitate them covering ground efficiently with low energy expenditure.

So even if we presume equal weight for the mal and AWD, the AWD is always going to LOOK heavier. I don't think they are equal weight, personally. But I guess I'm open to the data for top AWD weights being fraudulent like it is for wolves (I don't see the same motivation for "big bad AWD" inflation, but maybe).

[Hardcastle]

Here's one image that had an impact on me, relevant to the discussion-



That's not a miniature chihuahua or anything like that, it's just a normal dog, specifically a normal street/feral dog. This is what you encounter (all you encounter) in remote impoverished areas of 3rd world countries.  Like wolves, AWD weight doesn't quite do them justice IMO. I believe the dog in these photos is about 20-22" and ~30 lbs, minimum on both fronts. Very generous minimum, trying to keep you on board. 


Here's a pic of a malinois with a collie-



These 2 dogs, IMO, are very comparable in size to the random pariah dog in the photo with the AWDs. I just know that's true from a lifetime of experience. They're that... dog... size. I don't know how else to explain it.