Jackal in Hiding

Natural History, Dec, 1998 by Judy Rice

During the dry season in southern Africa, any pool is bound to be a center of life as thirsty and dusty beasts gather to drink, bathe, or wallow. But a water hole can also be an arena in which any lapse of attention may leave one creature open to attack from another that has come not only to drink but also to feed.

Just after sunrise one dry day in Chobe National Park, in northernmost Botswana, photographer Theo Allofs watched as one predator, a black-backed jackal, worked the water-hole crowd. Quick-moving, jackals in groups are game enough to scavenge from kills made by lions and hyenas; as single hunters, they go for insects, birds, and other smallish prey. This lone jackal had already snatched and devoured one turtledove from the flocks ringing the water and seemed intent on going for seconds, a situation that called for stealth. The dozen or so elephants at the water hole offered the little canine a hiding place of architectural proportions: their flanks like gray walls, their bellies and legs like the roofs and pillars of porticoes. "The the elephants," Allofs noted, "were absolutely oblivious of the jackal, while it had to be wary of being squashed, as the pachyderms constantly milled about. But then again, wariness is the dominant trait of the jackal. It is almost constantly in motion, its eyes darting around incessantly." Allofs caught the peering hunter in a rare moment of stillness, just before it shot out after another dove.