They might have the word "dog" in their name, but the latest group of bachelors to move in to the National Zoo and Aquarium are nothing like their domesticated cousins.
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Six male African painted dogs went on display last week in an expanded section of the zoo styled on the African savannah.
"If you're here at feed time or you see the wild dogs interacting with each other you can see very quickly how different they are to domestic dogs," the zoo's wildlife supervisor, Bec Scott, said.
"They are highly vocal animals ... they're very tactile with lots of social interaction between the members of the group to keep reaffirming bonds."
The small group of males was once part of a larger pack at another zoo, but their new enclosure will remain strictly boys only.
"It's an important [...] for some zoos to take on the bachelor groups so that the breeding groups can continue elsewhere, otherwise those zoos just run out of space," Ms Scott said.
As the wild dog breeding season approaches, Ms Scott expects to see more competition as a hierarchy is established, but having no females will help water down the rivalry.
"Being a social animal, there is certainly a lot of interaction which sometimes can result in days where they're not that happy with each other, but that's quite typical of wild dog pack," she said.
"Their vocabulary is quite broad with lots of high-pitched noises but they also have low growls, short bark growl noises and they all mean a range of different things."
About 6000 of the endangered dogs remain in the wild in southern Africa and numbers continue to decline, Ms Scott said.
"They're persecuted because they're thought to hunt livestock so there is a lot of attitude with them to catch and kill them," she said.
"They're also susceptible to domestic dog diseases."
As one of the most carnivorous animals, the dogs avoided any plant matter and in the wild chased antelopes to the point of exhaustion before the pack brought the animal down, Ms Scott said.
It's an existence that is unable to be recreated in the zoo, but the dogs in Canberra enjoy a varied diet to rival any restaurant, with plenty of high protein, low fat meat including deer, chicken, turkey and hares.
"We can't drag a carcass around for two kilometres and let them hunt it down, but we provide them with the post-kill experience," Ms Scott said.
"We feed them carcass and whole meals where the group has to work together to get bits off.
"It's building the social bonds and teaching that they have to share … they'll even regurgitate food for each other like in the wild."
