• Species Name: Panthera tigris tigris
• Habitat: Jungle and grasslands of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, and Nepal
• Reproduction: The average litter contains two to five cubs; they are completely dependent on their mothers for the first 18 months of their lives.
• Diet: Tigers are superb hunters that mainly go after deer, monkeys, wild boar, bison, and, occasionally, humans (the tiger has probably attacked and killed more people than any other wild mammal).
• Characteristics and Behavior: The tiger is the largest member of the feline family. Its stripes provide excellent camouflage and help make it an excellent hunter. Adult males can grow to up to 10 feet in length and can weigh more than 550 pounds; females are almost as large. Just as house cats do, tigers mark their territory with scent by rubbing and scratching trees and other landmarks. Tigers and jaguars are the only cats to excel at swimming.

LEOPARD

• Species Name: Panthera pardus
• Habitat: The Middle East, most of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia Minor, India, Pakistan, China, Siberia, much of mainland Southeast Asia, and the islands of Java and Sri Lanka.
• Reproduction: There is no defined breeding season; females give birth every one to two years, rearing a litter of anywhere from one to six cubs.
• Diet: Opportunistic feeders, leopards hunt gazelles, deer, wild goats, pigs, domestic livestock, and monkeys. If necessary, they will also eat rabbits, birds, rodents, and even insects.
• Characteristics and Behavior: The leopard’s spots are called rosettes. This cat is an immensely strong animal, with a powerful neck and jaw that enables it to scale the high branches of a tree while dragging a carcass, that may weigh more than itself, in its mouth. It is remarkably adaptable, surviving handily in forests, savannas, mountain heights, and woodlands.

GOLDEN JACKAL

• Species Name: Canis aureus
• Habitat: Throughout North and East Africa, Southeast Europe, and South Asia
• Reproduction: Males and females bond monogamously, sometimes permanently, and share the duties of raising their young. Each year, they have a litter with an average of two to four pups.
• Diet: Jackals are omnivores, and eat everything from fruits and vegetables to invertebrates, reptiles, birds, small mammals, carrion, and — near human habitation — garbage.
• Characteristics and Behavior: While it can thrive in many different habitats, the golden jackal seems to prefer dry landscapes and open country, including grassland steppes. Jackals are good hunters, especially when providing for their young. They will scavenge after a larger animal has made a kill, rushing in to eat any meat remaining, then heading back tot the den to regurgitate it for their pups.

BENGAL FOX

• Species Name: Vulpes bengalensis
• Habitat: Open, unforested areas in India, Nepal, and Pakistan, particularly the Himalayan foothills
• Reproduction: Bengal foxes are believed to form monogamous relationships and have litters of three to six kits. Sometimes, members of the previous litter will stay behind to help their parents raise the next one.
• Diet: They eat almost anything, but mainly ground-nesting birds, rodents, insects, and smaller mammals, as well as some plants and fruits.
• Characteristics and Behavior: By nature, Bengal foxes are daytime creatures, but they have been so aggressively hunted — partly for their flesh, which is thought by some to hold medicinal properties, but mainly for sport — that they have become nocturnal in areas inhabited by humans.

PEACOCK

• Species Name: Pavo cristatus
• Habitat: Forested lowlands and foothills of India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The peacock is the national bird of India.
• Reproduction: The peacock’s fanning display of his famously brilliant tail feathers helps him win a mate; the brighter his colors, the more likely he is to win the peahen of his choice. Each year, a peahen lays an average of four to six eggs.
• Diet: Peacocks feed on plants and small animals, such as mice, insects, and snakes, some of which may even be poisonous.
• Characteristics and Behavior: A peacock is the male member of the peafowl species; the females are known as peahens. The peacock is the largest member of the pheasant family. The male’s tail feathers grow up to several feet long and are shed every year after mating season; the female is much more drab in appearance. They are not powerful fliers, preferring to spend most of their time on the ground.

DUNG BEETLE

• Species Name: Scarabaeidae Deltochilum gibbosum
• Habitat: Rainforests, jungles, and other forested areas throughout the world; dung beetles exist on every continent on earth except for Antarctica
• Reproduction: Female dung beetles lay their eggs directly into balls of dung, producing only one offspring at a time.
• Diet: They eat dung and lots of it, mostly excreted by plant-eating animals.
• Characteristics and Behavior: Dung beetles are very industrious insects, spending their days rolling dung into balls, then transporting the balls into a network of tunnels in which they live. In Bandhavgarh, dung beetles are an essential part of the overall forest ecology: monkeys eating in fig trees let their excretions drop to the forest floor, and the beetles cary it away. Fig seeds inside the monkey’s dung are rolled into the dung balls, which are germinated in new locations, thus helping to foster new generations of fig trees.

CHITAL

• Species Name: Cervus axis axis
• Habitat: In and around forested areas throughout India and Sri Lanka
• Reproduction: A chital gives birth to one fawn at a time, normally once a year but sometimes twice. Males stage battles over females by dueling with their antlers.
• Diet: Grass and other vegetation
• Characteristics and Behavior: Unlike other deer that lose their antlers seasonally, male chital shed and re-grow their antlers throughout the year. Sometimes, chital can be found near troops of langurs, feeding on their discarded leaves. As a result, chital and langurs help one another avoid predators: langurs look out from above, while chital use their powerful sense of smell to detect danger on the ground. Each species has learned to heed the warning call of the other.

HANUMAN LANGUR

• Species Name: Semnopithecus entellus
• Habitat: Mountain scrub and rainforests in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, China, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. In addition, it is found near and within many urban areas of India.
• Reproduction: Like most primates, hanuman langurs give birth to one baby at a time. In Bandhavgarh, most infants are born during spring’s dry season.
• Diet: Vegetarians, they eat mostly leaves, as well as fruits and flowers. They are able to digest and even thrive on seeds that humans would find toxic, such as those containing a high level of strychnine.
• Characteristics and Behavior: The hanuman langur is considered sacred in India for its resemblance to Hanuman, the Hindu god of healing and worship. Because of this, hanuman langurs dwelling in urban areas receive handouts from humans, and their raids on cultivated crops are tolerated.

OWL

• Family Name: Strigidae
• Habitat: Owls make their homes everywhere in the globe except for in Antarctica.
• Reproduction: Owls mate in the spring, with females laying an average of three or four eggs. Only the largest and the strongest of the hatchlings will survive to adulthood.
• Diet: Owls eat small mammals such as rodents, birds, amphibians, insects, and birds.
• Characteristics and Behavior: Owls are superb nocturnal hunters whose incredibly powerful senses of hearing and sight guide them to carefully hidden prey, even in the dimmest of nights. Their specially arranged feathers allow them to swoop and glide nearly soundlessly, descending upon prey without warning. Owls are famous for their vision: unlike most other birds, their eyes are large (they can account for up to five percent of an owl’s total body weight) and face forward, held in place by bony structures called sclerotic rings.

SAMBAR

• Species Name: Cervus unicolor
• Habitat: Asia and South Asia; they prefer wooded areas for protection and feeding.
• Reproduction: Mating occurs in the fall, and a single fawn is born six months later.
• Diet: Sambar eat leaves, grasses, berries, and fruits; sambar can sometimes be spotted in the water, browsing for vegetation that grows on the bottom of lakes.
• Characteristics and Behavior: Sambar, the most common deer species in the world, are the largest deer found in India, sporting antlers up to three feet long; full-grown males stand up to 5 feet tall and can weigh 700 pounds. That’s a lot of meat, and sambar are definitely the favorite meal of the tigers of Bandhavgarh — tigers usually attack the largest available prey, since they usually only eat about 60 percent of their kills. Sambar feed mainly at night, sleeping during much of the day.

We recommend these Web sites for those interested in the subjects shown on the program. All links are valid as of June 14, 2001.

The World Wildlife Foundation’s Golden Jackal Project
http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/europe/where/greece/jackals/about_jackal.cfm
Learn more about common jackals and efforts to protect them.

Canis aureus (Golden Jackal, Common Jackal)
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/canis/c._aureus
The lowdown from the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology.

BC Nature wildfacts: Golden Jackal
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/130.shtml
animal/APAsrch3.cgi?qt=jackal&type;=image
View images and see videos of several types of jackals.

Patricia D. Moehlman: Into the Wilds of Africa
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000989F7-F2F7-1C5A-B882809EC588ED9F
A profile of “the jackal woman,” from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area
http://www.tanzania-web.com/parks/ngorongo.htm
A description from Tanzania’s Tourist Board.

Print Resources

Crofts, Marylee. TANZANIA IN PICTURES. New York: Lerner, 1988.

Estes, Richard. THE SAFARI COMPANION: A GUIDE TO WATCHING AFRICAN MAMMALS. London: Chelsea Green, 1999.

Fitzpatrick, Mary. TANZANIA, ZANZIBAR & PEMBA. Melbourne, Australia: Lonely Planet, 1999.

Kingdon, J. FIELD GUIDE TO AFRICAN MAMMALS. Chicago: Academic Press, 1997.

Moehlman, Patricia and Laurence Pringe. JACKAL WOMAN: EXPLORING THE WORLD OF JACKALS. New York: Atheneum, 1993.

Producer
RONNIE GODEANU

Art Director
SABINA DALEY

Writer
DAVID MALAKOFF

Graphic Art
LENNY DROZNER

Technical Director
BRIAN PATRICK LEE

Scientific Consultant
GIANNA SAVOIE

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Anthony Chapman, Director of Interactive & Broadband. Carmen DiRienzo, Vice President and Managing Director, Corporate Affairs.

About the Writer

David Malakoff is a journalist covering research discoveries and the politics of science for SCIENCE MAGAZINE in Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in a wide range of venues, including THE ECONOMIST, THE WASHINGTON POST, and ABCNews.com. He lives with his wife and three children — NATURE lovers all — in Alexandria, Virginia.

© 2000 Thirteen/WNET New York

All Rights Reserved

Television Credits

A Co-Production of Thirteen/WNET New York and BBC-TV

Ngorongoo Crater supports many animals.

Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater — the scenic location of NATURE’s Jackals of the African Crater — is one of the world’s most famous wildlife preserves. The ancient, thousand-foot deep remains of a long extinct volcano supports thousands of grazing animals, along with the lions, cheetahs, and jackals who feed on them. And a soda-rich lake in the middle of the 100-square-mile crater attracts massive flocks of birds, from elegant long-necked flamingos to busy swarming finches. Careful observers can even find rare rhinos in the preserve’s bushy backcountry.

Ngorongoro’s rich animal life has long made it a magnet for researchers and wildlife filmmakers. Indeed, some say it is one of the most studied and photographed places on earth. But there is still much to learn and see, say researchers. Many of the crater’s hundreds of species of birds, for instance, have never been studied. And, the scientists add, the growing number of tourists attracted to the crater makes studies of how the animals are responding to the visitors essential.

The attraction to Ngoronogoro is understandable. From one of the lodges perched atop the crater’s rim, for instance, the views are remarkable. And the opportunities to get close to wildlife, such as jackals, are extraordinary. But researchers worry that, without care, visitors could one day harm the very animals they come to see.

The jackal has a bad reputation.

Ancient Egyptians believed they were gods of the underworld, and that their evening yips and yowls were the haunting songs of the dead. Modern cultures dismissed them as cold-hearted and calculated killers, the vicious thugs of the animal world.

But as NATURE’s Jackals of the African Crater shows, the dog-like jackal lives a far more complicated — and challenging — life than many once believed. Indeed, jackals need all the creativity and cunning they can muster to survive on the rolling grasslands and marshes of Africa’s Ngorongoro Crater, where three species of jackal — golden, black-backed, and side-striped — struggle to raise families and find food.

Jackals of the African Crater documents the dramatic, and sometimes heartrending, stories of these jackal families. One pair of black-backed parents struggles to feed its pups in the midst of a dry season, only to lose their nearly grown offspring to a hungry golden jackal. A pair of side-stripes are luckier: their marsh-side home provides plenty of food, from insects and plants to the scavenged leftovers from kills made by lions and cheetahs. The program also highlights the jackal’s own hunting abilities, from taking down young wildebeest to headlong rushes that capture wading flamingos that have ventured too close to shore.

Jackals develop specialized hunting skills.

Jackals, which are related to domestic dogs and wild wolves, are found in many parts of Africa, southeastern Europe, and southern Asia. And while they may be known for their taste for meat, Jackals of the African Crater illustrates what researchers have known for years: the animals also get a large share of their diet from plants and insects. Some studies of golden jackals, for instance, found that nearly half of their meals consisted of plants, and that they will eat everything from eggs and frogs to grasshoppers and snakes. “They have to be very flexible in their tastes, able to shift to whatever is available at the time,” says Javier Sorgena, a wildlife photographer who has captured the animals on film. “Plus, they have to develop all kinds of specialized hunting skills — pouncing on a gazelle is a lot different than batting down a grasshopper or harvesting a mushroom.”

Researchers have also documented that jackals, unlike most mammals, mate for life, which can last 10-12 years in the wild. They raise their young (an average litter has five pups) in carefully dug burrows. The babies are born blind, but are usually ready to care for themselves after four months, and will stay with the family until they are 18 months old. As parents, however, jackals can get some help that is a little unusual. Often, grown offspring will remain with a mating pair as helpers, assisting the family in many ways.

Jackals have a large vocabulary of calls.

They stand watch outside the den, issuing “rumble growls” and “predator barks” that warn the pups to take shelter. The helpers also bring food to the pups and nursing mothers, increasing the odds that both parents and offspring will survive the rigors of childrearing.

Cooperation isn’t limited to family life, however. When it comes to hunting, jackals also work together. Several pairs, for instance, may take turns tiring out and dragging down a gazelle. And many jackals may band together to scare a cheetah away from its kill, so they can feed on the scraps.

To coordinate such activities, jackals have a large vocabulary of calls that they use to communicate. Yips, growls, hisses, and howls all have a place in the jackal language, each sound designed to warn away strangers or welcome friends. Jackals also have remarkably expressive body language, using everything from a submissive “heads down” posture to athletic body slams to communicate their place in the pack. “A lot of their behavior is like [that of] domestic dogs,” says Sorgena. “You can know when they are content or angry just by looking at them. Jackals are much more expressive than you might expect.” And, he adds, “Much less sinister and more interesting, too.”

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Online content for Jackals of the African Crater was originally posted February 2000.

“Jackal Woman” Patricia Moehlman.

While jackals may never shake their negative image in some cultures, one researcher has done much to popularize a deeper understanding of the complex and highly social animal profiled in NATURE’s Jackals of the African Crater.

In the late 1960s, American animal behavior researcher Patricia Moehlman joined chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall to study jackals in East Africa. For months, she followed the golden jackals of Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater as they fed, fought, and raised families.

That taste of jackal life sparked a lifelong interest in Moehlman. In the mid-1970s, she returned to Africa’s wildlands — this time the nearby Serengeti Plain — to study jackals. Indeed, she was the first woman to gain permission to conduct research on the Serengeti, long considered a man’s scientific world. Soon, Moehlman had been dubbed “the jackal woman,” a phrase that later became the title of a well-received book about her work, which continues today.

A jackal pup.

Moehlman’s years of study have revealed much that was unknown or poorly understood about jackals. In particular, she has shed light on the important role of adult “helpers,” young jackals who remain with their parents to help raise the next litter of pups. Once, some scientists scoffed at the notion that some animals would pass up a chance to produce their own young in order to raise their brothers and sisters. But Moehlman’s work showed that, in some cases, it makes perfect sense to help raise your kin rather than your own kids.

Evolutionary ecologists call the concept “kin selection.” In essence, the idea is that helpers gain genetic benefits from hanging around to help relatives. One benefit is that the helpers learn how to be successful parents, making it more likely that the helper and its pups will survive when it comes time to breed. In addition, the helpers can aid the survival of their younger brothers and sisters, increasing the chance that more of their common gene pool is passed along to future generations.

Moehlman’s studies of golden jackals, for instance, show that a mating pair successfully raises, on average, one pup per mating season when on their own. With helpers, however, “more pups survive,” Moehlman notes. “Add a helper, and you add a pup.”

Moehlman has helped change our image of jackals.

But she is still combing through her data for clues to understanding jackals, the helpers, and their habits. One intriguing question, she says, is “why some offspring stay and help, while others leave and try to establish their own territories.”

While many researchers rely on trapping, tagging, or blood tests to conduct kin selection studies of wild animals, Moehlman’s jackal work has taken a more hands-off approach. She has relied on her powers of observation to keep track of family links, learning to identify specific animals by telltale marks, such as facial scars. “It is bad science to intervene with animals in ways that affect their behavior and survival,” she recently told SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, explaining her research philosophy.

In addition to her research, Moehlman has also taken on several important causes. She is committed to increasing Africa’s supply of trained researchers, and has worked closely with universities in Tanzania and other African nations to improve training and ensure that African scientists play a greater role in studies on their home continent. She has also become an active conservationist, working with local people to ensure that threatened populations of wild horses, asses, and zebras get the protection they need.

In the meantime, her documentation of jackal behavior — from the role of helpers to their lifelong mating commitments — continues to help improve their reputation among people. Jackals, she notes “can be role models for humans.” With greater understanding, she says, “animals that people once feared become objects of admiration.”