508 THE CARNIVORES 



and villages of India the jackals act as efficient scavengers. Occasionally they 

 take to killing poultry and lambs or kids; and Jerdon states that weakly goats and 

 sheep often become their prey, while wounded antelopes are tracked down and killed. 

 Among vegetable foods, the chief favorite seems to be the so-called ber-fruit; 

 but Professor Ball reports that in certain districts jackals do enormous damage to 

 the sugar plantations, biting ten or a dozen canes for one they eat. Like the civet 

 in Java, jackals in the Wynaad district of Madras feed on the ripe fruit of the 



coffee plant. 



Somewhat curiously, the jackal of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor agrees with 

 the Indian rather than with the African variety; the general color being a pale 

 dirty yellow, more or less tinged with rufous, with a variable amount of black on 

 the back. In the Morea, where these animals are very common, they are asserted 

 to be in the habit of disinterring dead bodies from the graveyards. 



The cry of a pack of jackals, when heard for the first time, strikes the ear with 

 a peculiarly blood-curdling chill, and gives the impression that it is uttered by a 

 much larger number of individuals than is really the case. Mr. Blanford describes 

 the cry as consisting of two parts; first, " a long wailing howl, three or four times 

 repeated, each note a little higher than the preceding, and then a succession of 

 usually three quick yelps, also repeated two or three times. The common Anglo- 

 Indian version of ' Dead Hindoo, where, where, where,' gives some idea of the call." 

 In the so-called variegated jackal of the Abyssinian Highlands, which is sometimes 

 regarded as specifically distinct from the ordinary North African form, the second 

 half of the cry is omitted. 



In addition to the ordinary cry there is, however, as the same writer remarks, 

 another very peculiar call, " only uttered by the jackal, it is believed, when a tiger 

 or a leopard is in the neighborhood, and certainly uttered upon such occasions. 

 The cry is unmistakable; I have several times heard it; but the jackal that makes 

 it carries us at once into the region of fable and folklore. The same story that has 

 existed on the shores of the Mediterranean for two thousand years at least, that a 

 jackal acts as scout for the lions, or ' lions' provider,' and is repaid by a share of 

 the prey, is commonly believed with regard to the tiger in India; and it is this 

 peculiar jackal, known as Pheal, Phiou, or Phnew, in Northern India, the name 

 being taken from the cry, and as Bhalu, or Kol-bhalu, in Southern and Western 

 India, that is said to invariably precede the tiger, and to make the call just noticed. 

 Several observers have, however, remarked that the jackal which makes the cry fol- 

 lows the tiger and does not precede him; and Blyth has observed that a pariah dog, 

 on sniffing a collection of caged tigers in Calcutta, set up a most extraordinary 

 howl, probably similar to that of the Pheal." 



Occasionally the skull of the jackal has a peculiar bony process growing from 

 the upper part of the occiput, which is said to be covered during life by a horny 

 sheath, concealed among the hair, forming the so-called "jackal's horn." The 

 female jackal generally gives birth to her young in a hole in the ground, although 

 they have been found in an old drain; the number of cubs in a litter being usually 

 from three to five. The pariah dogs of India breed freely with the jackal. Fossil 

 remains of the jackal occur in the Siwalik hills of Northern India. 



