Identifying Small Carnivores

One of the groups of animals that seem to prove quite tricky to tell apart on Snapshot Serengeti are the small carnivores that belong to the canid and hyenid family. That is to say the jackals, black-backed and side-striped, the bat-eared fox and the aardwolf.

There are good reasons for this. Firstly they are predominantly nocturnal, though the jackals can often be seen in day light hours. Secondly they are small and constantly on the watch for larger predators. Studies have even shown that similar species such as coyotes are rather camera-trap shy so it could be possible these African cousins are avoiding the cameras. I noticed when looking for bat-eared fox images particularly that there are very few close up images, the foxes always seem to be in the distance. Something to maybe study?

So back to classifying, what’s the best way to tell these species apart?

Let’s start with the jackals, the most dog–like of the Serengeti’s small carnivores.

The first thing to note is there are actually three possible jackals to be found in the Serengeti but I will stick here to the side-striped and black-backed as the most common, the golden jackal doesn’t come up so often on our cameras but looks broadly the same as the other two with slightly more uniform colouring.

Black-backed jackal

Side-striped jackal

Jackals have dog like proportions with the shoulders and hind end approximately the same height. They have very pointed muzzles and large pointed ears. The black-backed can be distinguished by its black saddle running from the back of the neck through the shoulders up to a point at the top of the tail. It is flecked with white hairs giving a grizzled appearance. The rest of the body is a sandy colour. The side-striped is more uniform grey brown with a flash down its side both light and dark but lacking the saddle. The tip of the tail is often white. Their ears are smaller than black-backed jackal.

Bat-eared fox

Aardwolf

The bat-eared fox meanwhile is a strange looking creature. All three of these carnivores have large ears to help them locate prey but the bat-eared fox wins the prize. Its ears dwarf its little face which is very small. They need these huge ears to locate their insect prey. Over all bat-eared foxes are the smallest of the three and have a rather plain silver/grey coat with dark legs, ears and upper parts of its thick bushy tail. If you are not sure look at the over all posture. The jackals hold their head high on a strong neck but the little bat-eared fox often has his head down and appears to have no neck.

Aardwolf, although not canids, are included here because in size and shape they are very similar to the other two. Fortunately these guys have distinctive striped coats which help separate them from all but the much larger and very rare (in Snapshot Serengeti) striped hyena. The aardwolf seems to have a rather thick long neck and a much more hyena shaped heavy muzzle.

So the tip here is to look closely at body form as well as colour, hopefully seeing these images of the three together will be helpful next time you get stuck classifying.