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Canis Aureus, the Golden Jackal

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Canis Aureus, the Golden Jackal CHAPTER ELEVEN CANIS AUREUS, THE GOLDEN JACKAL 11.1 The Living Animal 11.1.1 Zoology The golden or Asiatic jackal is a member of the family of the dogs— Canidae: wolves, jackals, dogs, and foxes—. It has a long pointed muzzle, large erect ears, a deep-chested muscular body, a bushy tail, slender, sinewy limbs, short and blunt claws on their small and compact feet, and soft pads below the feet as have the other wild members of the dog family. They all walk on their toes (digitigrade). Apart from these, each member has a few distinguishing characteristics.1 The golden jackal (fi g. 167) is medium-sized with a shoulder height of around 0.4 m; jackals from the north are on the average bigger and heavier in build than those from the south. Its coat is golden—hence its name—with a darker coloured saddle on the back. The jackal is smaller and meaner in aspect than the Indian wolf (see next section) and it also lacks its arching brows and elevated forehead. From a distance, however, it is not easy to distinguish the golden jackal from either an Indian wolf or a red dog, apart from size. In general, the head and muzzle is the most massive and triangular in red dogs, massive and square in the Indian wolf, and somewhat more pointed and gracile in the golden jackal. Jackals occasionally eat grass, herbs and fruit but are principally scavengers, next to active hunting on whatever they can catch. Together with vultures and hyenas, golden jackals clear carcasses and garbage in many Indian towns and villages. Most people in India do not consume beef for religious reasons. As a direct result, cattle carcasses are freely available for scavenging. Golden jackals occasionally hunt small deer and antelopes in small packs. Near villages, they sometimes attack poultry, young lambs and goats. Jackals also raid melon patches and 1 See sections 12.1.1 (domestic dog), 16.1.1 (red dog), and 42.1.1 (foxes). golden jackal 151 sugar-cane fi elds, eat the coffee berries in coffee plantations and the fallen fruits of ber trees. The jackal’s long-drawn howling at dusk or just before dawn is more familiar to most people than the animal itself. The so-called “cat-call”2 sometimes given out by a jackal is commonly associated with the pres- ence of a tiger. This cry is an expression of fear or alarm, but not only for tigers. During the day, jackals shelter in holes, among ruins, or in dense grass and scrub. In very hot weather jackals lie in water to cool down. When their life is in danger, jackals may “sham dead”, lying prone and inert as if dead; this habit is also seen in Indian wolves and hyenas. The natural enemies of the golden jackal are the striped hyena, pythons and the feral dogs around settlements. Golden jackals are found all over the Indian subcontinent, includ- ing Sri Lanka. Remains of Canis aureus have been recovered from the ancient site Lothal in Gujarat (Mature Harappa period).3 Golden jackals are very common, and can be considered the most successful species of the dog family in South Asia because they live in almost any environment, all over India, from the humid forest country to the dry open plains, including the desert.4 The highest altitude where they have been reported is c. 3.7 km in the Himalayas. However, the majority of golden jackals lives in the lowlands, not far from towns and villages and cultivation. 11.1.2 Related Species A close relative of the golden jackal is the Indian wolf (Canis lupus).5 The Indian wolf has a shoulder height of about 0.7 m, which is almost twice that of a jackal. The Indian wolf is, however, much smaller and more gracile and slender than the grey wolf in the rest of Eurasia 2 A term coined by the rangers in Sariska Natural Reserve, Rajasthan. 3 Nath, op. cit. (1968), 1–63; Chitalwala and Thomas, op. cit. (1977–8), 14. 4 Y. Jhala and P. Moehlman, “Golden jackal Canis aureus Linnaeus, 1758,” in Canids: Foxes, Wolves, Jackals and Dogs—2004 Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan, ed. C. Sillero- Zubiri, M. Hoffmann and D. Macdonald (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 2004), 156–161. 5 Because of the difference in appearance, skull and teeth morphology, the Indian wolf is sometimes considered more than just a geographical race of the grey wolf, and given specifi c rank as Canis pallipes. The latter option is confi rmed by the characteristics of their mitochondrial DNA; see D. Sharma, J. Maldonaldo, Y. Jhala and R. Fleischer, “Ancient wolf lineages in India,” PRS Biology Letters, 271 (2003), 1–4..
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