The Wild Dog Breed That Hunts Tigers

If we're being honest, canines have always had the short end of the stick when it comes to the cats versus dogs debate, at least when it comes to '90s-level extreme wildlife. Nature's big cats put wild dogs to shame. Netflix is never going to recapture that sexy, jet-fueled, Joe Exotic lightning in a bottle with a show called Coyote King or The Duke of Dingo or Doc Antle Breeds Puggles Now.

This unfortunate state of affairs comes, undoubtedly, courtesy of The Man. The lobbyists from Big Big Cat don't want you to know that there are feral puppers out there right this instant that would make your run-of-the-mill puma mess its fashion-forward Jordache jeans. Monster dogs with yellow eyes pulled from Peter Billingsly's own yuletide nightmares and a propensity for slashing bears in the swimsuit area. Yes, really.

They're called dholes, and we can laugh about that later. There's no time right now.

Let's cover the basics: the dhole, or Cuon alpinus, is a species of wild dog that hangs its hat in the forests of Central and Southeast Asia. Rust colored, muscular, and around three feet long, it looks a lot like a red fox if a red fox just got done doing a nickel for amphetamine distribution. They live in packs with as many as forty individuals, mostly hunting any hoofed critters that pass within mauling distance.

And we do mean "any." Dholes (pronounced like the presidential candidate from 1996) have been spotted slaughtering creatures fifty times their size. Adding to their reputation as the Joe Pesci characters of the great outdoors, they tend not to kill their prey before eating it, preferring to "bite out its eyes, disembowel it, hamstring or emasculate it" and then consume it alive once it hits the ground, according to the Guardian. Video of these little-known creatures is rare, but there are recordings of them holding big cats at bay, and anecdotal accounts of their hunting and killing tigers.