Interesting facts about Asiatic Jackal by weird square
Channel: Animal Square
Date: 12/01/2018

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The golden jackal (Canis aureus) is a wolf-like canid that is native to Southeast Europe, Southwest Asia, South Asia, and regions of Southeast Asia. Compared with the Arabian wolf, which is the smallest of the gray wolves, (Canis lupus), the jackal is smaller and possesses shorter legs, a shorter tail, a more elongated torso, a less-prominent forehead, and a narrower and more pointed muzzle. The golden jackal's coat can vary in color from a pale creamy yellow in summer to a dark tawny beige in winter. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List due to its widespread distribution and high density in areas with plenty of available food and optimum shelter.
The ancestor of the golden jackal is believed to be the extinct Arno river dog that lived in Mediterranean Europe 1.9 million years ago. It is described as having been a small, jackal-like canine. Genetic studies indicate that the golden jackal expanded from India around 20,000 years ago towards the end of the last ice age. The oldest golden jackal fossil, found at the Ksar Akil rock shelter near Beirut, Lebanon, is 20,000 years old. The oldest golden jackal fossils in Europe were found in Greece and are 7,000 years old. There are seven subspecies of the golden jackal. The golden jackal is more closely related to the gray wolf, coyote, African golden wolf, and Ethiopian wolf than it is to the African black-backed or side-striped jackals. It is capable of producing fertile hybrids with both the gray wolf and the African golden wolf. Jackal–dog hybrids called Sulimov dogs are in service at the Sheremetyevo Airport near Moscow where they are deployed by the Russian airline Aeroflot for scent-detection.
Golden jackals are abundant in valleys and beside rivers and their tributaries, canals, lakes, and seashores. They are rare in foothills and low mountains. The golden jackal is a social species, the basic social unit of which consists of a breeding pair and any young offspring. It is very adaptable, with the ability to exploit food ranging from fruit and insects to small ungulates. They will attack domestic fowl and domestic mammals up to the size of domestic water buffalo calves. The jackal's competitors are the red fox, wolf, jungle cat, forest wildcat, and, in the Caucasus, the raccoon, and, in Central Asia, the steppe wildcat. The jackal is expanding beyond its native grounds in Southeast Europe into Central Europe, occupying areas where there are few or no wolves.
The word "jackal" appeared in the English language around 1600. It derives from the Turkish word çakal, which originates from the Persian word šagāl. The golden jackal, Canis aureus – "golden dog" in Latin – was first recorded by the Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 publication Systema Naturae.It is also known as the common jackal, the Asiatic jackal, and Eurasian golden jackal. The mammalogist W. Christopher Wozencraft listed thirteen subspecies under C. aureus in the third edition of Mammal Species of the World, published in 2005. The biological family Canidae is composed of the South American canids, the fox-like canids, and the wolf-like canids. All species within the wolf-like canids share a similar morphology and possess 78 chromosomes, allowing them potentially to interbreed.[8] Within the wolf-like canids is the jackal group, which includes the three jackals: the black-backed jackal (C. mesomelas), the side-striped jackal (Canis adustus), and the golden jackal (Canis aureus). These three species are approximately the same size, possess similar dental and skeletal morphology, and are identified from each other primarily by their coat color. They were once thought to have different distributions across Africa with their ranges overlapping in East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania). Although the jackal group has traditionally been considered as homogenous, genetic studies show that jackals are not monophyletic (they do not share a common ancestor), and they are only distantly related. The accuracy of the colloquial name "jackal" to describe all jackals is therefore questionable. Animal planet | Discovery | Netflix | Documentary | Animal World
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