Improved food waste management could also help to reduce free-ranging dogs in and around human settlements 16. Vaccination and animal birth control programmes are expensive, and likely to be effective only if practiced on a large scale 14, 15. It becomes a serious problem for health management in developing countries where the movement and reproduction of free-ranging dogs are not entirely controlled by humans. Exponential growth of the human population facilitates population growth of free-ranging dogs 13. For example, 99% of all human deaths caused by rabies occur in developing countries, with the majority of cases resulting from dog bites 10. These free-ranging dogs are often considered as a major threat to human health for being reservoirs of rabies, canine distemper and parvovirus 11, 12, 13. Sometimes people are attacked by dogs on streets, especially at night when a motor vehicle passes the territory of free-ranging dogs. While free-ranging dogs depend heavily on humans for sustenance and interact regularly with humans, they are often considered a menace for being carriers of pathogens and zoonosis 11, 12, 13. Openly disposed human leftovers, domestic animal carcasses and food received from humans through begging are the major sources of their diet 9, 10. They have managed to survive as scavengers 7, 8, co-existing with humans in urban as well as rural habitats. Free-ranging dogs ( Canis lupus familiaris), descendants of pack-living gray wolves ( Canis lupus lupus), underwent domestication and became a ubiquitous part of human habitations 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
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