Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: How heavy is an adult golden jackal?
The golden jackal is similar to the gray wolf but is distinguished by its smaller size, lighter weight, more elongated torso, less-prominent forehead, shorter legs and tail, and a muzzle that is narrower and more pointed.[56] The legs are long in relation to its body, and the feet are slender with small pads.[57] Males measure 71–85cm (28–33in) in body length and females 69–73cm (27–29in). Males weigh 6–14kg (13–31lb) and females weigh 7–11kg (15–24lb). The shoulder height is 45–50cm (18–20in) for both.[56] In comparison, the smallest wolf is the Arabian wolf (Canis lupus arabs), which weighs on average 20kg (44lb).[58]
Results from two recent studies of mDNA from golden jackals indicate that the specimens from Africa are genetically closer to the gray wolf than are the specimens from Eurasia.[6][13] In 2015 a major DNA study of golden jackals concluded that the six C.aureus subspecies found in Africa should be reclassified under the new species C.anthus (African golden wolf),[14][15][16] reducing the number of golden jackal subspecies to seven. The phylogenetic tree generated from this study shows the golden jackal diverging from the wolf/coyote lineage 1.9million years ago and the African golden wolf diverging 1.3million years ago. The study found that the golden jackal and the African golden wolf shared a very similar skull and body morphology and that this had confused taxonomists into regarding these as one species. The study proposes that the very similar skull and body morphology is due to both species having originated from a larger common ancestor.[14]
In Dalmatia, the golden jackal's diet consists of mammals, fruits, vegetables, insects, birds and their eggs, grasses and leaves.[78] Jackals change their diet to more readily available foods. In Serbia, their diet is primarily livestock carcasses that are increasingly prevalent due to a lack of removal, and this may have led to the expansion of their population.[79] In Hungary, 55% of their diet is composed of common voles and bank voles, and 41% is composed of wild boar carcasses.[80] Information on the diet of the golden jackal in northeastern Italy is scant, but it is known to prey on small roe deer and hares.[23] In Israel, golden jackals are significant predators of snakes; during a poisoning campaign against golden jackals there was an increase in human snakebite reports, but a decrease when the poisoning ceased.[81]
Social interactions such as greetings, grooming, and group howling are common in jackals. Howling is more frequent between December and April when pair bonds are being formed and breeding occurs, which suggests howling has a role in the delineation of territory and for defense.[57] Adult jackals howl standing and the young or subordinate jackals howl sitting.[83] Jackals are easily induced to howl and a single howl may solicit replies from several jackals in the vicinity. Howling begins with 2–3 low-pitched calls that rise to high-pitched calls.[57] The howl consists of a wail repeated 3–4 times on an ascending scale, followed by three short yelps.[52] Jackals typically howl at dawn and in the evening, and sometimes at midday. Adults may howl to accompany the ringing of church bells, with their young responding to sirens or the whistles of steam engines and boats.[84] Social canids such as golden jackals, wolves, and coyotes respond to human imitations of their howls.[85] When there is a change in the weather, jackals will produce a long and continuous chorus.[84] Dominant canids defend their territories against intruders with either a howl to warn them off, approach and confront them, or howl followed by an approach. Jackals, wolves and coyotes will always approach a source of howling.[86] Golden jackals give a warning call that is very different from their normal howling when they detect the presence of large carnivores such as wolves and tigers.[57][52]
The ancestor of the golden jackal is believed to be the extinct Arno river dog that lived in Mediterranean Europe 1.9million 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 jackal or side-striped jackal. 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.
The golden jackal is both a predator and a scavenger,[76] and an omnivorous and opportunistic forager with a diet that varies according to its habitat and the season. In Bharatpur, India, over 60% of its diet was measured to consist of rodents, birds, and fruit. In the Kanha Tiger Reserve, 80% of its diet consists of rodents, reptiles and fruit. Vegetable matter forms part of the jackal diet, and in India they feed intensively on the fruits of buckthorn, dogbane, Java plum, and the pods of mesquite and the golden rain tree. The jackal will scavenge off the kills made by the lion, tiger, leopard, dhole, and gray wolf. In some regions of Bangladesh and India, jackals subsist by scavenging on carrion and garbage, and will cache extra food by burying it.[57] The Irish novelist, playwright and poet, Oliver Goldsmith, wrote about the golden jackal:
During British rule in India, sportsmen conducted golden jackal hunting on horseback with hounds, with jackal coursing a substitute for the fox hunting of their native England. They were not considered as beautiful as English red foxes, but were esteemed for their endurance in the chase with one pursuit lasting ​31⁄2 hours. India's weather and terrain added further challenges to jackal hunters that were not present in England: the hounds of India were rarely in as good condition as English hounds, and although the golden jackal has a strong odor, the terrain of northern India was not good in retaining scent.[112] Also, unlike foxes, jackals sometimes feigned death when caught and could be ferociously protective of their captured packmates.[62]
The oldest golden jackal fossil was found at the Ksar Akil rock shelter located 10km (6.2mi) northeast of Beirut, Lebanon. The fragment of a single tooth is dated approximately 7,600 years ago.[21] The oldest golden jackal fossils found in Europe are from Delphi and Kitsos in Greece and are dated 7,000–6,500 years ago.[22] An unusual fossil of a heel bone found in Azykh Cave, in Nagorno-Karabakh, dates to the Middle Pleistocene and is described as probably belonging to the golden jackal, but its classification is not clear. The fossil is described as being slightly smaller and thinner than the cave lynx, similar to the fox, but too large, and similar to the wolf, but too small. As the golden jackal falls between these two in size, the fossil possibly belongs to a golden jackal.[20] The absence of clearly identified golden jackal fossils in the Caucasus region and Transcaucasia, areas where the species currently resides, indicates that the species is a relatively recent arrival.[23]
The European jackal is the largest of the golden jackals, with animals of both sexes measuring 120–125cm (47–49in) in total length and 10–13kg (20–29lb) in body weight.[8] One adult male in North-Eastern Italy is recorded to have reached 14.9kg (33lb).[9] The fur is coarse, and is generally brightly coloured with blackish tones on the back. The thighs, upper legs, ears and forehead are bright reddish chestnut.[2] Jackals in Northern Dalmatia have broader than average skulls, which is thought to result from human induced isolation from other populations, thus resulting in a new morphotype.[10]
Outside of India, golden jackals in the Caucasus and Turkey demonstrate the next highest genetic diversity,[26] while those in Europe indicate low genetic diversity,[28][29] confirming their more recent expansion into Europe.[30] Genetic data indicates that the golden jackals of the Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece and the Dalmatian coast in Croatia may represent two ancient European populations from 6,000 years ago that have survived into modern times. Jackals were absent from most of Europe until the 19th century, when they started to expand slowly. Jackals were recorded in Hungary with the nearest population known at that time being found in Dalmatia, some 300 kilometers away. This was followed by rapid expansion of jackals towards the end of the 20th century. Golden jackals from both Southeast Europe and the Caucasus are expanding into the Baltic. In the Middle East, golden jackals from Israel have a higher genetic diversity than European jackals. This is thought to be due to Israeli jackals having hybridized with dogs, gray wolves, and African golden wolves,[30] creating a hybrid zone in Israel.[14]
Golden jackals are extremely harmful to fur-bearing rodents, such as coypu and muskrats. Coypu can be completely extirpated in shallow water bodies. During 1948–1949 in the Amu Darya, muskrats constituted 12.3% of jackal fecal contents, and 71% of muskrat houses were destroyed by jackals. Jackals also harm the fur industry by eating muskrats caught in traps or taking skins left out to dry.[110]
Red foxes and golden jackals share similar diets. Red foxes fear jackals, which are three times bigger than red foxes. Red foxes will avoid close proximity to jackals and fox populations decrease where jackals are abundant.[93] Foxes can be found only at the fringes of jackal territory.[50] Striped hyenas prey on golden jackals, and three jackal carcasses were found in one hyena den.[57]
The word 'jackal' appeared in the English language around 1600. It derives from the Turkish word çakal, which originates from the Persian word šagāl.[118] It is also known as the common jackal, the Asiatic jackal,[57][1] and Eurasian golden jackal.[14]
In Southeastern Asia, golden jackals have been known to hunt alongside dhole packs.[41] They have been observed in the Blackbuck National Park, Velavadar, India, following Indian wolves (Canis lupus pallipes) when these are on a hunt, and they will scavenge off wolf kills without any hostility shown from these wolves.[57] In India, lone jackals expelled from their pack have been known to form commensal relationships with tigers. These solitary jackals, known as kol-bahl, will associate themselves with a particular tiger, trailing it at a safe distance to feed on the big cat's kills. A kol-bahl will even alert a tiger to prey with a loud "pheal". Tigers have been known to tolerate these jackals, with one report describing how a jackal confidently walked in and out between three tigers walking together.[90][91] Golden jackals and wild boar can occupy the same territory.[50]
The jackal's competitors are the red fox, wolf, jungle cat, forest wildcat, and raccoon in the Caucasus, and the steppe wildcat in Central Asia.[65] Wolves dominate jackals, and jackals dominate foxes.[50] In 2017 in Iran, an Indian wolf under study killed a golden jackal.[92] In Europe, the range of wolves and jackals is mutually exclusive, with jackals abandoning their territory with the arrival of a wolf pack. One experiment used loudspeakers to broadcast the calls of jackals, and this attracted wolves at a trotting pace to chase away the perceived competitors. Dogs responded to these calls in the same way while barking aggressively. Unleashed dogs have been observed to immediately chase away jackals when the jackals were detected.[50] In Europe, there are an estimated 12,000 wolves. The jackal's recent expansion throughout eastern and western Europe has been attributed to the extermination of the local wolf populations. The present diffusion of the jackal into the northern Adriatic hinterland is in areas where the wolf is absent or very rare.[68][83] In the past, jackals competed with tigers and leopards, feeding on the remains of their kills and, in one case, on a dead tiger. Leopards once hunted jackals, but today the leopard is rare and the tiger is extinct in the jackal's range.[65]
The jackal's fur is coarse and relatively short,[59] with the base color golden, varying seasonally from a pale creamy yellow to a dark tawny. The fur on the back is composed of a mixture of black, brown, and white hairs, sometimes giving the appearance of the dark saddle like that seen on the black-backed jackal. The underparts are a light pale ginger to cream color. Individual specimens can be distinguished by their unique light markings on the throat and chest.[57] The coats of jackals from high elevations tend to be more buff-colored than those of their lowland counterparts[48] while those of jackals in rocky, mountainous areas may exhibit a grayer shade. The bushy tail has a tan to black tip.[57] Melanism can cause a dark-colored coat in some golden jackals, a coloring once fairly common in Bengal.[62] Unlike melanistic wolves and coyotes that received their dark pigmentation from interbreeding with domestic dogs, melanism in golden jackals probably stems from an independent mutation that could be an adaptive trait.[63] What is possibly an albino specimen was photographed in southeastern Iran during 2012.[64]
A haplotype is a group of genes found in an organism that is inherited from one of its parents.[24][25] A haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a single mutation inherited from their common ancestor.[9] The mDNA haplotypes of the golden jackal form two haplogroups: the oldest haplogroup is formed by golden jackals from India, and the other, younger, haplogroup diverging from this includes golden jackals from all of the other regions.[26] Indian golden jackals exhibit the highest genetic diversity, and those from northern and western India are the most basal, which indicates that India was the center from which golden jackals spread. The extant golden jackal lineage commenced expanding its population in India 37,000 years ago. During the Last Glacial Maximum, 25,000 to 18,000 years ago, the warmer regions of India and Southeast Asia provided a refuge from colder surrounding areas. At the end of the Last Glacial Maximum and the beginning of the warming cycles, the golden jackal lineage expanded out of India and into Eurasia to reach the Middle East and Europe.[27]
The golden jackal may have once been tamed in Neolithic Turkey 11,000 years ago, as there is a sculpture of a man cradling a jackal found in Göbekli Tepe.[115] French explorers during the 19thcentury noted that people in the Levant kept golden jackals in their homes.[116] The Kalmyk people near the Caspian Sea were known to frequently cross their dogs with jackals,[116] and Balkan shepherds once crossed their sheepdogs with jackals.[23]
In areas where the black-backed jackal is sympatric with the larger side-striped jackal, the former species aggressively drives out the latter from grassland habitats into woodlands. This is unique among carnivores, as larger species commonly displace smaller ones. Black-backed jackal pups are vulnerable to African golden wolves, ratels, and spotted and brown hyenas. Adults have few natural predators, save for leopards and African wild dogs.
The Arno river dog (Canis arnensis) is an extinct species of canine that was endemic to Mediterranean Europe during the Early Pleistocene around 1.9million years ago. It is described as a small jackal-like dog and probably the ancestor of modern jackals.[18] Its anatomy and morphology relate it more to the modern golden jackal than to the two African jackal species,[19][20] the black-backed jackal and the side-striped jackal.
Golden jackals exhibit flexible social organization depending on the availability of food. The breeding pair is the basic social unit, and they are sometimes accompanied by their current litter of pups. In India, their distributions are a single jackal, 31%, two jackals, 35%, three jackals, 14%, and more than three jackals, 20%.[57] Family groups of up to 4–5 individuals have been recorded.[82] Scent marking through urination and defecation is common around golden jackal den areas and on the trails they most often use. Scent marking is thought to assist in territorial defense. The hunting ranges of several jackals can overlap. Jackals can travel up to 12–15km (7.5–9.3mi) during a single night in search of either food or more suitable habitat. Non-breeding members of a pack may stay near a distant food source, such as a carcass, for up to several days before returning to their home range. Home range sizes can vary between 1–20km2 (0.39–7.72sqmi), depending on the available food.[57]
Jackal coursing involves the pursuit of jackals (usually the golden jackal and black-backed jackal) with dogs.
The wolf-like canids (the canid subfamily Caninae) are a group of large carnivores that are genetically closely related because their chromosomes number 78. The group includes genus "Canis", "Cuon" and "Lycaon". The members are the dog "(C. lupus familiaris)", gray wolf ("C. lupus"), coyote ("C. latrans"), golden jackal ("C. aureus"), Ethiopian wolf ("C. simensis"), black-backed jackal ("C. mesomelas"), side-striped jackal ("C. adustus"), dhole ("Cuon alpinus"), and African wild dog ("Lycaon pictus"). Newly proposed members include the red wolf ("Canis rufus"), eastern wolf ("Canis lycaon"), and African golden wolf ("C. anthus"). As they possess 78 chromosomes, all members of the genus "Canis" (coyotes, wolves, jackals) are karyologically indistinguishable from each other, and from the dhole and the African hunting dog. The members of "Canis" can potentially interbreed and there is evidence that the Ethiopian wolf has hybridized with dogs. According to zoologist Reginald Pocock, a dhole interbred with a golden jackal. The African hunting dog is large, highly mobile, known to disperse over large distances and are rare throughout much of their geographical range, making opportunities for hybridization difficult. A study of the maternal mitochondrial DNA of the black-backed jackal could find no evidence of genotypes from the most likely mates – the side-striped jackal nor the golden jackal – indicating that male black-backed jackals had not bred with these. A search of the scientific literature could not find evidence of hybridization for the rare side-striped jackal.
It was estimated that the African golden wolf diverged from the wolf–coyote clade 1.0–1.7 million years ago, during the Pleistocene, and therefore its superficial similarity to the Eurasian golden jackal (particularly in East Africa, where African wolves are similar in size to golden jackals) would be a case of parallel evolution. Considering its phylogenetic position and the canid fossil record, it is likely that the African wolf evolved from larger ancestors that became progressively more jackal-like in size upon populating Africa on account of interspecific competition with both larger and smaller indigenous carnivores. Traces of golden wolf DNA were identified in golden jackals in Israel, which adjoins Egypt, thus indicating the presence of a hybrid zone. The study's findings were corroborated that same year by Spanish, Mexican and Moroccan scientists analysing the mtDNA of wolves in Morocco, who found that the specimens analysed were distinct from both Eurasian golden jackals and grey wolves but bore a closer relationship to the latter. Studies on RAD sequences found instances of African wolves hybridizing with both feral dogs and Ethiopian wolves.
Surveys taken in the High Adriatic Hinterland indicate that the totality of people with first hand experience of jackals (hunters, game keepers and local people) regularly mistook red foxes affected by sarcoptic mange (or in a problematic state of moult) for golden jackals. The sighting of a true golden jackal however, was always referred to as a wolf, or a little wolf. This was verified both with photo-trapping sessions and with track studies, confirming previous observations on this matter. This erroneous and controversial perception of the golden jackal may be due to the fact that its presence is still not traditional, neither in Italian and Slovenian human culture, nor in hunting and game keeping traditions.[21]