Pat's Wildways: Jackal Study
I always seem to get mixed up in things that go beyond my scope of work and this recent USAID Serbia biodiversity assessment was no exception. I had a capable team working with me, and we split into two groups to cover more ground in our fieldwork. One team, Gabor Mesaros and Jaime Capron, went north to the mostly agricultural area of Vojvodina, while I went southeast to the mountains with Vanja Jaksic. And, as an added plus, an esteemed large carnivore specialist, Dusco Cirovic, joined us and drove us around in his University of Belgrade field vehicle. I couldn’t be happier, as a carnivore specialist (otters) myself.
Dusco and his team have radio collars on bears and jackals at the moment. In these days, long after my own primitive studies, there are amazing technical devices to study animals. The collars Dusco uses automatically record data on the animal’s movements to his computer and cell phone and are updated every eight hours. Dusco was interested in accompanying us because one of his collared jackals had not moved in nearly two weeks — a sure sign that she was dead — and it was located right in the area we were visiting. On our way back to Belgrade, our plan was to visit this area and retrieve the radio collar and try to figure out the cause of mortality. As a biologist, I was thrilled.
Jackals in Europe are small canines, similar to coyotes in our country, and like coyotes they are spreading in their ranges and numbers, becoming a “nuisance animal” to people. Although jackals don’t harm pets, as our coyotes do, people in rural areas still dislike them, and they are legal to shoot. They are not seen very often but their calls resound in the evenings in most areas of Serbia. Dusco’s study aims to learn more about the ecology and behavior of these animals and he is still trapping more to attach more collars.
One evening Vanja, Dusco and I were enjoying another huge meal of lots of meat, potatoes, bread, cheese, salad, and giant desserts — typical here — when suddenly Dusco’s phone burst into an alarm. Another jackal had been captured in a trap he had set up in Vojvodina where our colleagues were. We listened on Dusco’s cell phone and heard another jackal crying nearby but the trapped one was silent. Dusco has an army of field workers everywhere he has traps set and within an hour one of his coworkers removed the snare (one that does not harm the animal) and put the jackal into a big cage with food and water for safe keeping until Dusco could get up there to put on a collar. The photos we were sent of the jackal showed him to be a large, healthy male, quietly accepting his temporary captivity.
When we headed back to Belgrade the next day the sun was setting but we still had enough light to look for the collar or the carcass or whatever we could find from the jackal that had stopped moving. We drove in our field vehicle across a harvested corn field and spread out to look for the collar in a few hundred square meters of territory. We found jackal fur, jackal scat but no jackal and no collar. Another look at his computer confirmed that yes, the jackal was on the move again. Expecting the animal to be dead, Dusco did not have the equipment with him to pinpoint the exact location of the moving jackal, although the collar can transmit this data too. It is a mystery why this female jackal stayed in one spot for two weeks. Did it give birth? Was it injured? We did not see the jackal, but now, with the collar intact and moving, Dusco will learn more.
Not many of my USAID biodiversity assessments actually have a bit of field research like this. For the most part, my teams participate in endless meetings with stakeholders in the government, non-profit organizations, academic institutions, and such. Some days we never see anything but taxis and offices and some scenery if we are lucky. But this was different — a real opportunity for me to update myself on field techniques that have changed in the 30 years since I have done fieldwork myself.
And it was wonderful!
Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations. [email protected]
