Dear all,
First of all a happy new year, secondly a small report on a short mammal trip in Ethiopia!
Highlights were a close encounter (on foot) with a Buffalo in Chebera-Churchura and sightings of Aardwolf and Leopard in Awash.
Greets, Matthhias
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I so wanted to get to the far west… but didn’t have time.
Thanks Matthias. Interesting about the possible Ruepell’s in Awash. I was convinced I saw one there but according to IUCN at least it seems a long way out of range. Another example (Vladimir) for your mammal watching paper maybe. jon
African pale fox would be a lot more likely. We saw one near Axum and another one just N of Awash junction in 2009. Rueppell’s is a lot more desert-specialized; the only one we saw in Ethiopia was in northern Afar Desert near Erta’Ale Volcano.
I agree that it could have been pale fox as well (Basically, I only saw the head and it was night). I saw 2 foxes near Erta’Ale in October 2013 (daylight sighting) and was at that time convinced it were Pale foxes. Unfortunately I have no picture. You think they can both occur here?
IUCN maps for foxes are very approximate (even for better-known species in better-known countries). Considering recent events in Ethiopian zoology, I wouldn’t consider anything impossible anywhere. The main difference is tail tip color: black in pallid and white or at least not black in Rueppell’s.
The one I saw definitely has a white tip to the tail. We chased it for a while (at speed) in the 4WD but we were always going too fast and bumpy to get a picture.
I think we should publish all this. Small Carnivore Conservation would be a good place. If you both could email me the time, date, exact locations, what the animals were doing, and what were the ID features, I can write a short note.
I’m sorry but I didn’t have the chance to see it’s tail, so I’m afraid you can’t work with my observation of Awash…
Sorry to bump this thread, but I was intrigued by the possibility of pale fox sightings in Awash.
I have been traveling to Afar several time in the past 2 years for my work on invasive Prosopis trees (and will spend the coming week there as well) and I have seen these foxes on several occasions in the late afternoon. I first put them down as variation within the golden jackal/African wolf mess and these African golden wolfs are pretty common in Afar… But especially after a prolonged sighting last year, close to the dirt road from Awash Sebat to Doho hot springs, I am quite sure they are Pale foxes indeed. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures….
The locals also differentiate between them and the jackals (wolfs) and they apparently can differentiate them on call…
I hope I will get a chance to find them again the coming week and get some pictures….
That’s good to know. We really need sene pictures of these animals!
We published our records, so you can just publish yours in the same journal and cite us 🙂
http://www.canids.org/CBC/18/Pale_and_Ruppells_foxes_in%20Ethiopia.pdf
Unfortunately we did not find any fox. The area I wanted to check is now a building site for a new railroad, we chose a different road instead and had no less than 4 sightings of African golden wolf within 1 hour, but no other canids…. I got my first Grevy zebra earlier in the week though, so it was still a good week mammalwise.