Canis in West Ethiopia

I am reposting this for Matthias

Hi all. A friend of mine has sent me a few pictures of road kills in Western Ethiopia. The confusion I have is the issue with the African wolf… The pictures are attached below, I would say the right one is a Side striped jackal. It might be because of the casualty not looking too fresh anymore though the left one looks different to me…

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Thanks for your input,

Matthias

5 Comments

  • Conuropsis

    Both look like African Wolf or Golden Jackal, whatever you want to call it, to me. I don’t see the lighter coloration or white-tipped tail of the Side-striped compared to the wolf. They look just like the wolves/jackals I saw while in Kenya. Just my opinion.

    Andrew

  • Vladimir Dinets

    The first one has a side stripe, a single black stripe across the chest, and a sloping forehead, so I think it’s a side-striped jackal (I can’t see the tail tip so I wonder if Conuropsis and I are seeing different images for some reason). The teeth are too small for a wolf. The second photo is too small to see much detail, but if you could upload a larger version, the dentition should be visible and it should be possible to ID it.

  • matthias

    Hi all,

    By copy pasting from the old site (Finally found out why it went so silent 😉 the lay out changed (and photo quality too). I agree with Vladimir on the side-striped jackal for the above picture.

    For the below picture I have no idea why it got so blurry but I’m also struggling to add a new picture to the reply section.

  • Charles Foley

    I’m pretty sure both of them are Side-striped based on the throat colouration and patterning. The overall body colour of this species varies considerably across Africa, but the white throat followed by a black stripe and white patches just above the front legs appears to be a reliably consistent identification marker across the continent.

  • Hector Gomez de Silva

    Becasue pelage color is a bit variable, I thought the most trustworthy difference between Side-striped and other jackals was the relative size of the ears. Both photos in Matthias’s post seem to show the small ears typical of Side-striped.

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