The night of the jackal: sheep, pastures and predators in the Cape - South Africa

Past & Present, Feb, 1998 by William Beinart

There is evidence going back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century to suggest that wild dogs were `a great menace to sheep'.(25) R. G. Cumming recorded that `the devastation occasioned by these dogs among the flocks of the Dutch Boers is inconceivable ... Not contented with killing as many as they can eat, [they] follow resolutely on, tearing and mangling all that come within their reach'.(26) James Stevenson-Hamilton's less spectacular portrait, which is careful to avoid imputing motives to animals, suggests why this pattern of killing evolved.(27) Wild dogs behaved in a similar manner when attacking a herd of impala, their favoured prey. They preferred shock tactics, killing all they could immediately and chasing others which they anticipated would flee. While their `contempt of any but fresh meat' meant that they were difficult to trap, it also ensured that they had to hunt frequently. Such traits may help to explain why they failed to find a niche in the interstices of the colonial agrarian economy. Wild dogs were coursers not stalkers and hunted regularly in large groups, usually in the early morning and evening; they were easily seen and shot. They required extensive ranges -- a point which conservationists now stress to defend enlarged boundaries for game reserves -- and also seem to have been susceptible to diseases.(28) By the early twentieth century they had ceased to be a problem except in the most thinly populated regions of the and north and north-west, and have since become extinct in South Africa outside of the Kruger National Park.(29)

There were two kinds of jackal in southern Africa, as well as a number of species which were sometimes called jackals.(30) The side-striped jackal (canis adustus) prefers moister and more densely wooded areas; within South Africa it was largely found in the Eastern Transvaal, outside of the main sheep zone. The most important sheep predator was the black-backed jackal (canis mesomelas), widespread in southern and eastern Africa, especially in more open semi-arid and grassland habitats also favoured for sheep. It is so named because of the wide saddle of silvery-black hair on its back. For the rest, it is largely reddish-brown in colour and was often called the rooijakkals (red jackal) by settlers; the Tswana made striking striped hats and cloaks (karosses) from its skins.(31) It is a smaller animal than the wild dog and not particularly big by jackal standards, but it was able to adapt to changing circumstances better than any other of the wild dogs or cats.

A good deal was published on jackals around the turn of the twentieth century. Government committees scrutinized their behaviour and they were described in the more scientific natural histories that were displacing hunting sagas. These and later sources agree that black-backed jackals were omnivorous. They would eat carrion, bones, small mammals of all kinds -- anything that they could catch without too much risk -- insects, termites, reptiles, even vegetation, especially berries and grass.(32) On the west coast of Namibia, jackals survive on marine resources and seabirds.