A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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dhole
The dhole is a wild dog of Asia, reddish, with a short muzzle, rounded ears, and a black bushy tail. It hunts in packs across a range that once ran from Siberia to Java, and it is unusual among dogs for how it communicates: dholes whistle. The pack keeps contact through a clear repeated whistle that carries through dense forest where they cannot see each other, which is why they are also called whistling dogs.
Etymology
The word came into English from India in the early nineteenth century and its source is not established. Proposals point at Kannada and other languages of the subcontinent, and none has been settled. The scientific name is more traceable: Cuon alpinus uses a Greek word for dog and a Latin word for high country. In India, the animal is also the ram kutta and the red dog, and Kipling used the latter as the title of a Jungle Book story about them.
Notes
Dholes have one fewer molar on each side of the lower jaw than other dogs, and more teats than most, which is part of why they were long put in a genus of their own. Pack members feed pups by regurgitation and let them eat first at a kill, which is the reverse of the usual order among social carnivores.