Order: Carnivora

Family: Canidae

 

Size: Head to tail length: up to 100 cm.

Weight: - up to 8-11 kg.

 

Key Features: Black hairs predominate on the middle of the back and tail. The belly, chest and the sides of the legs are creamy white, while the face and lower flanks are grizzled with grey fur. It is generally of a richer colour than the common jackal, the pale areas of the back being of a pale buff colour rather than whitish or silver. Black specimens have been reported in Bengal. Adults are slightly larger than common jackals.

 

Breeding: The period of gestation in the jackal is usually said to be sixty-three days, the same as in the wolf and dog.

 

Diet: Though primarily a scavenger which subsists on garbage and offal, it will supplement its diet with rodents, reptiles, fruit and insects.

 

Habitat: inhabits lowlands on the outskirts of towns, villages and farms, where they shelter in holes among ruins or dense brush.

Except during hot periods, the Indian jackal usually only leaves its den at dusk and retires at dawn. 

 

Habits: Lone jackals expelled from their pack have been known to form commensal relationships with tigers. These solitary jackals are known askol-bahl, bhálú in southern India, phéall, phao, pheeow or phnew in Bengal and ghog in other regions. They will attach themselves to a particular tiger, trailing it at a safe distance in order to feed on the big cat's kills. A kol-bahl will even alert a tiger to a kill with a loud pheal. 

 

Conservation Status: Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

 

Distribution in the GoK: reported along the coast of Gulf of Kachchh.

 

 

 

 

 

References:

IUCN Red List. http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/3744/0

 

Mammals of Nepal: (with reference to those of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Pakistan) by Tej Kumar Shrestha, published by Steven Simpson Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9524390-6-9.

 

Pocock, R. I. (1941). Fauna of British India: Mammals Volume 2. Taylor and Francis.

 

Jerdon, Thomas Claverhill (1867). The mammals of India: a natural history of all the animals known to inhabit continental India, Thomason college press.

 

Robert Armitage Sterndale (1884). Natural history of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink.

 

Perry, Richard (1965). The World of the Tiger. p. 260. ASIN: B0007DU2IU.

 

Photo Courtesy

Koshyk, Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons