Jackal

A jackal has a slim head and pointed, foxlike snout but is otherwise built much like a small wolf or dog. Its coat is a grizzled tawny buff, and its bushy tail darkens toward a nearly black tip. The three known species, the side-striped, the black-backed and the Asian, differ in little beyond their markings.

Jackals are neither fierce nor bold. They flee when charged or menaced by another predator, and they give up a hunt if the quarry proves livelier than expected. When they do fight they bite, often darting in, snapping, then backing off to watch the result. Several jackals on one target attack in a disorganized scramble.

These common scavengers live on warm plains, grasslands and deserts, sleeping out the hot day in burrows they dig. At night they hunt, usually in pairs, occasionally in packs of up to six, picking only on animals too old, young, sick or hurt to resist. They also eat carrion and the odd bit of fruit.

A roaming jackal constantly gives its shrill call, the pheal, which carries a long way and frightens far more than the animal does. Plant-eaters, domestic ones included, grow nervous at the sound: each jackal adds a 10% chance that a herd panics and stampedes, a chance halved for horses and similar beasts with keepers to calm them.

Their taste for corpses and the helpless has given them a sinister place in human myth, but the bad name is unearned. They rarely attack people, and the lurid tales told wherever they live nearly always prove to be secondhand rumor.

Jackals are scavengers more than hunters, culling the weak and clearing away carcasses that would otherwise rot and spread disease. Pups are self-sufficient after a little over a year, and wild jackals live 12-15 years. Near human settlements they often breed with dogs, and both the crossbreeds and wild adults tame easily. Too timid for guarding or hunting, they are kept as pets, but they are rarely sold and fetch very little.