Four dholes (Asiatic wild dogs) were found dead under suspicious circumstances in the Bokkapuram beat of the Singara Forest Range in the buffer zone of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) on Wednesday.
Officials said the dholes, two males and two females, said to be around four-years-old, were found dead on Wednesday.
A post-mortem was conducted on the carcasses by a veterinarian from Masinagudi.
Samples have been collected and sent for forensic testing in Coimbatore and for histopathological analysis in Chennai.
Deputy Director of MTR (buffer zone), L.C.S. Srikanth, said that forest officials suspected that the dholes could have been killed due to secondary poisoning.
“During postmortem, we found the meat of a spotted deer in the stomach of the animals. We suspect that the deer could have fed on crops grown in the area, which may have been grown using pesticides, which in turn affected the animals,” Mr. Srikanth said.
He said that only after the test results returned, and the toxin that led to the death of the four animals was identified, could the Forest Department be certain about whether people had poisoned the carcass of the spotted deer.
There were concerns among officials that the four animals were poisoned, as they were found dead in the same forest range where an Adivasi woman was mauled to death by a tiger. The death had led to tensions rising between local residents, who had been demanding the capture of the tiger, and the forest officials.
Further investigations are on.
The dhole is classified as an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
