JACKAL
(26
JACKSON
Eisteiu Jicki
which resembles that of the wolf. The color of the • body is yellowish-gray above, whitish below ; the back and sides sometimes of mixed gray and black ; the shoulders, thighs, and legs uniformly tawny-yellow. The tail is round, projecting, and reaching hardly to the heel. The eyes are large, with a round pupil. It is gregarious in its habits, hunting in packs (generally preying upon smaller animals and poultry, but frequent- ly attacking the larger quadrupeds), the pest of the countries where it is found. It burrows in the earth, preferring forests and caverns, where it usually lies hid during the daytime ; but at night it issues in companies (sometimes verj' large) on predatory incursions among the villages, and often the immediate vicinity of towns. Its favorite food is fowls or carrion, and it will break into graves to make a meal upon the corpse, and even carry off and devour young children if found unprotect- ed. In a wild state, this animal has an intolerably of- fensive odor. Colonel Hamilton Smith, in his Canidce, states that "jackals form a group of crepuscular and nocturnal canines, never voluntarily abroad before dark, and then hunting for prey during the whole night; en- tering the streets of towns to seek for offals, robbing the hen-roosts, entering out-houses, examining doors and win(kiws, feasting u]ion all dressed vegetables and ill- secured provisions, devouring all the carrion they find exposed, and digging their way into scpulclires that are not cuixiiilly jirotected against tlieir activity and vora- ciousness; and in tlie fruit season, in common with foxes, seeking the vineyards, and fattening upon grapes. Tliey congregate in great numbers, sometimes as many as two hundred being found together, and they howl so incessantly that the annoyance of their voices is the theme of numerous apologues and tales in the literature of Asia. This cry is a melancholy sound, beginning the instant the sun sets, and never ceasing till after it has arisen. The voice is uttered and responded to by all within hearing, in an accent of every possible tone, from a short, hungrj' yelp to a prolonged crescendo cry, rising octave above octave in the shrillness, and mingled with dismal whinings, as of a human being in distress." Their nightly liowl lias a peculiar wailing tone (Kussol, .•I Icppo, p. (;■_> ; Kussegger, licisc, iii, 125), greatly resem- bling the cry of a child. " These sinister, guilty, woe- begone brutes, when pressed with hunger, gather in gangs among the graves, and yell in rage, and tight like tieuds over their midnight orgies ; but on the battle-
field is their great carnival" (Thomson, Land and Book, i, 134). (See, generally. Bo- chart, Ilieroz. ii, 180 sq., who maintains that the jackal was designated among the Greeks and Komans by the name &WC, x!(d6q, Kampfer, Amoen. ii, 406 sq. ; Gmelin, Reise. ii, 81 sq. GUldenstadt. in Xoi: comment, acad. Pefnijinl. xx, 449 sq. ; Oedmann. tSdinn/l. ii, 18 sq.)
This animal is very gener- ally regarded as denoted by the name ''X (i, the howler, in the plural, D'^^X, iyini', " wild beasts of the islands"), repre- sented as inhabiting deserts (Isa. xiii, 22 ; xxxiv, 14 ; Jer. xl, 30). It is more usually recognised as the hs^tlj, sJiu- cd', of Scripture (dXwrj/?, " fox"), especially in the in- stance of Samson's exploit (Judg. XV, 4 ; compare Eosen- mliller, AlterihumsTc. IV, ii, 156 sq., and Scholia ad Judi- ces, p. 327). See Fox. We have, however, no proof that shual' denotes exclusive- ly the fox, and that iyim', and Solomon's little foxes, refer solely to jackals; particularly as these animals were, if really known, not abundant in AVestcm Asia, even during the first centurj'^ of the Koman empire; for they are but little noticed by the Greek writers and sportsmen who resided where now they are heard and seen every evening; these authorities offering no re- mark on the most prominent characteristic of the spe- cies, namely, the chorus of bowlings lasting all night — a habit so intolerable that it is the invariable theme of all the Shemitic wTiters since the Hegira whenever they mention the jackal. We may therefore infer that shual', if a general denomination, and that iyim', if the etymol- ogy be just, is derived from howling or barking, and may designate the jackal, though more probably it in- cludes also those wild Canidte which have a similar habit. Indeed, as Ehrenberg {Icon, et descript, mam- mal, dec. 2) has remarked, it is likely that travellers have usually confounded the jackal with the canis Syr- iaciis, while a thorough treatise on the ca7iis aureus is still a desideratum (see ^YooA, Bible Animals, p. 66).
There is also another term in the 0. T., 'T\ (tan, in plural by Chaldaism, '('^2^, tannin', regarded bj' others as the singular, whence a true plur. C^pSFl, tanninim', "dragons"), described as a wild animal inhabiting des- erts, and uttering a plaintive cry (Job xxx, 29 ; ]\Iic. i, 8); often joined (in poetic parallelism) with <^3S;^ r3, " daugliter of the ostrich," and D'^^Sj!, iyim' (Isa. xiii, 22 ; xxxiv, 13 ; xliii, 20). The S.yriac understands the jackal, and the Arabic the wolj' (com\). Pococke, Comm. in Mic. ad loc. ; Schnurrer, Diss.philol. p. 323 sq.). It is possibly no more than the canis Syriacus after all. Bo- chart {Ilieroz. iii, 222 sq.) interprets it of an enormous kind of serjient. See Dragon.