Part 44 (2/2)
Jerdon states that he has known wolves turn on dogs that were running at their heels, and pursue them smartly till close up to his horse.
He adds: ”A wolf once joined with my greyhounds in pursuit of a fox, which was luckily killed almost immediately afterwards, or the wolf might have seized one of the dogs instead of the fox. He sat down on his haunches, about sixty yards off, whilst the dogs were worrying the fox, looking on with great apparent interest, and was with difficulty driven away.”
NO. 246. CANIS LANIGER (LUPUS CHANCO _of Gray_).
_The Thibetan Wolf_.
NATIVE NAMES.--_Chanko_, _Changu_.
HABITAT.--Thibet.
DESCRIPTION.--Yellowish-grey, with long soft hairs (_Kinloch_).
Long sharp face, elevated brows, broad head, large pointed ears, thick woolly pelage, and very full brush of medial length; above dull earth-brown; below, with the entire face and limbs, yellowish-white; no marks on limbs; tail concolourous with the body, that is brown above and yellowish below, and no dark tip (_Hodgson_).
SIZE.--Length, 4 feet; tail, 20 inches; height, 30 inches.
Hodgson says this animal is common all over Thibet, and is a terrible depredator among the flocks, or, as Kinloch writes: ”apparently preferring the slaughter of tame animals to the harder task of circ.u.mventing wild ones.” The great Bhotea mastiff is chiefly employed to guard against it. According to Hodgson the chanko has a long, sharp face, with the muzzle or nude s.p.a.ce round the nostrils produced considerably beyond the teeth, and furnished with an unusually large lateral process, by which the nostrils are much overshadowed sideways and nearly closed. The eye is small and placed nearer to the ear than to the nose; the brows are considerably elevated by the large size of the frontal sinuses; the ears are large and gradually tapered to a point from their broad bases, and they have the ordinary fissure towards their posteal base; the head is broad; the teeth large and strong; the body long and lank, the limbs elevated and very powerful; the brush extends to half-way between the mid-flexure (_os calcis_) of the hind limbs and their pads, and is as full as that of a fox.
The fur or pelage is remarkable for its extreme woolliness, the hairy piles being few and sparely scattered amongst the woolliness, which is most abundant; the head as far as the ears, the ears, and the limbs are clad in close ordinary hair; the belly is thinly covered with longer hairs; but all the rest of the animal is clothed in a thick sheep-like coat, which is most abundant on the neck above and below.
Gray ('P. Z. S.,' 1863, p. 94) says: ”The skull is very much like, and has the same teeth as the European wolf (_C. lupus_),” but in this I think he is mistaken, as the upper carna.s.sial in _C. lupus_ is much larger than in any of the Asiatic wolves, and in this particular _C. laniger_ is affined to _C. pallipes_. There is a black variety of the chanko, as there is of the European wolf, and by some he is considered a distinct species, but is really a melanoid variety, though Kinloch writes: ”The black chanko is rather larger than the grey one; he is of a beautiful glossy black, with a small white star on the chest and a few grey hairs about the muzzle.” He was fortunate enough to secure two cubs of this variety. ”They fed ravenously on raw meat, and before long became pretty tame.” After accompanying him for two months he left them at the hill station of Kussowlie, fearing that the heat at Meerut might prove too great for them; at the end of 2-1/2 months they were sent down. ”By this time they had immensely increased in size, but, although they had not seen me for so long, they recognised me, and also my greyhound, of which they had previously been very fond. They soon became much attached to me, and would fawn on me like dogs, licking my face and hands; they were always, however, ready to growl and snap at a stranger. I took them to Agra at the time of the great Durbar there, and used to let them loose in camp with my dogs, so tame had they become.”
He eventually presented them to the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, and their portraits appeared in the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_ of November 21st, 1868. Whether the skins purchased at Kashgar by the Yarkand Mission were of _C. laniger_ or _lupus_ is doubtful, as no skulls were procured. In some particulars they seem to agree with the chanko in being rather larger (i.e., larger than _pallipes_); the hair long, and the under fur ash-grey and _woolly_, but the black line down the forelegs is like _C. lupus_. It is not stated whether the tail was dark-tipped or not, the absence of this dark tip, common to most other wolves, is a point noticed by Hodgson in speaking of _C. laniger_. Mr. Blanford describes another skin which was purchased at Kashgar, and which he supposes may belong to a new species, but there was no skull with it--it is that of a smaller canine, midway between a wolf and a jackal, the prevailing tint being black, mixed with pale rufous, and white along the back and upper surface of the tail; pale rufous on the flanks, limbs, anterior portion of the abdomen and under the tail; a distinct black line down the front of each foreleg; upper part of head rufous, mixed with whitish and black, the forehead being greyer, owing to the white tips to the hairs; the tip of the tail is quite black, and the tail itself is short, as in the jackal, but more bushy, the feet larger than the common jackal--a short, bushy tail agrees with _Cuon_, so also does the large foot.
NO. 247. CANIS LUPUS.
_The European Wolf_.
HABITAT.--All over Europe and Northern Asia, in Turkestan and Yarkand(?)
DESCRIPTION.--Fur long and coa.r.s.e, dark yellowish-grey, sometimes almost black, but there is a good deal of variation in both colour and texture of the hair according to the country, whether cold or warm, from which the animal comes; a dark streak on the forelegs; the carna.s.sial tooth is however the chief point of distinction between this and the Indian and Thibetan species; it is very much larger in the European animal, approximating to, and sometimes exceeding in size, the two molars together, which is not the case with the others. Mr. Blanford, in his report on the Mammalia of Yarkand published by Government in the 'Scientific Results of the Second Yarkand Mission,' quotes from Professor Jeitteles, of Vienna, the opinion that none of the larger domestic dogs could have descended from the European wolf, because of the relative proportions of their teeth, but that all must have been derived from the Indian wolf or from allied forms.
SIZE.--Head and body, 3-1/2 to 4 feet; tail, 20 inches; height, about 30 to 32 inches.
Mr. Blanford supposes, and with some degree of reason, that the flat skins purchased at Kashgar were those of this species; but unfortunately the absence of the skulls must for the present leave this in doubt, as variations in colour and texture of fur are frequent and dependent on climatic conditions.
NO. 248. CANIS AUREUS.
_The Jackal_ (_Jerdon's No. 136_).
NATIVE NAMES.--_Srigala_, Sanscrit; _Geedhur_, Hindi; _s.h.i.+al_, _Sial_, _Siar_ and _s.h.i.+alu_, Bengali; _Kola_, Mahrathi; _Nari_, Canarese; _Nakka_, Telegu; _Nerka_, Gondi; _s.h.i.+ngal_ or _Sjekal_, Persia; _Amu_, Bhotia; _Myae-khawae_, Burmese; _Nareeah_, Singhalese.
HABITAT.--Throughout India, Burmah, and Ceylon; it is found over a great part of Asia, Southern Europe, and Northern Africa.
DESCRIPTION.--”Fur dusky yellowish or rufous grey, the hairs being mottled black, grey, and brown, with the under fur brownish yellow; lower parts yellowish-grey; the tail reddish-brown, ending in a darkish tuft; more or less rufous on the muzzle and limbs; tail moderately hairy.”--_Jerdon_.
SIZE.--Head and body, 28 to 30 inches; tail, 10 or 11 inches; height, 16 to 18 inches.
The jackal is one of our best-known animals, both as a prowler and scavenger, in which capacity he is useful, and as a disturber of our midnight rest by his diabolical yells, in which peculiarity he is to be looked upon as an unmitigated nuisance.
He is mischievous too occasionally, and will commit havoc amongst poultry and young kids and lambs, but, as a general rule, he is a harmless, timid creature, and when animal food fails he will take readily to vegetables. Indian corn seems to be one of the things chiefly affected by him; the fruit of the wild behr-tree (_Zizyphus jujuba_) is another, as I have personally witnessed. In Ceylon he is said to devour large quant.i.ties of ripe coffee-berries, the seeds, which pa.s.s through entire, are carefully gathered by the coolies, who get an extra fee for the labour, and are found to be the best for germination, as the animal picks the finest fruit. According to Sykes he devastates the vineyards in the west of India, and is said to be partial to sugar-cane. The jackal is credited with digging corpses out of the shallow graves, and devouring bodies. I once came across the body of a child in the vicinity of a jungle village which had been unearthed by one. At Seonee we had, at one time, a plague of mad jackals, which did much damage. Sir Emerson Tennent writes of a curious horn or excrescence which grows on the head of the jackal occasionally, which is regarded by the Singhalese as a potent charm, by the instrumentality of which every wish can be realised, and stolen property will return of its own accord! This horn, which is called _Nari-comboo_, is said to grow only on the head of the leader of the pack.
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