India, Oct. 22 -- The Serengeti wildebeest migration is one of Africa's best-known animal journeys, yet the longest African round-trip migration on record, by blue wildebeest, is 650 kilometers (about 404 miles), according to the UN Convention on Migratory Species. A very different trip has now gone far beyond that. A study published in the journal Ecology found that three wild dog brothers in Zambia traveled 4,126 kilometers (or about 2,560 miles) in eight months. It was the longest recorded dispersal by an African mammal.

Dispersal is a one-way trip to find mates and new territory. Migration is a round trip between seasons, so the two are different behaviors and the numbers are not a like-for-like comparison. Even so, the distance the ...