Egyptian Jackal - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

Historically, whether or not lupaster is a large jackal or a small wolf has been the subject of debate. Aristotle was the first European to write of wolves in Egypt, mentioning that they were smaller than the Greek kind. Georg Ebers wrote of the wolf being among the sacred animals of Egypt, describing it as a "smaller variety" of wolf to those of Europe, and noting how the name Lykopolis, the Ancient Egyptian city dedicated to Anubis, means "city of the wolf". Some authors have rejected this as evidence for the existence of wolves in Egypt, as the name was bestowed upon the city by the Greeks rather than its Egyptian creators. Hemprich and Ehrenberg, upon seeing similarities between North African jackals and wolves, gave the species the binomial name Canis lupaster. Likewise, Thomas Henry Huxley, upon noting the similarities between the skulls of lupaster and Indian wolves, classed the species as a wolf. However, the animal was classed as a jackal by Ernst Schwarz in 1926. Walter Ferguson of the Tel Aviv University rejected this classification, and argued in favour of lupaster being a species of wolf, based on cranial measurements.

A comparative genetic analysis undertaken by the University of Leeds on Egyptian and Syrian jackals, as well as on wolves from Saudi Arabia and Oman, revealed that the classification of lupaster as a jackal could be valid, as there was a sequence divergence of only 4.8% between Egyptian and Israeli jackals, although only limited data were available. However, a collaborative study conducted by the University of Oslo, Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and Addis Ababa University compared the genetic material from golden jackals in Ethiopia with the Israeli and Egyptian samples mentioned above, and with other wild wolf-like canids. The results place the "Egyptian jackal" and similar "jackals" from Ethiopia firmly within the grey wolf species complex, together with the Holarctic wolf, the Indian wolf, and the Himalayan wolf. The analysis indicated that the Egyptian jackal represents an ancient strain of wolf, together with the Indian and Himalayan wolf, which colonised Africa prior to the spread of Canis lupus to the northern hemisphere.