Over the years, the effectiveness of China's ecological environmental protection and animal protection is obvious, the number of many species has shown an upward trend, and some rare wild animals have been witnessed in many places.
For example, the species of jackal was once suspected of extinction, but in recent years it has gradually appeared in people's field of vision, which is not set up in the infrared camera of the Sun River Provincial Nature Reserve in Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, and 5 jackals have been photographed running in front of the camera.
Earlier, in June 2021, Zhangye, Gansu Province, also captured the moving images of 14 jackals.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > jackal is mysterious</h1>
Although jackals have been widely distributed in most parts of China, especially in the south, the number of jackals is amazing, but the Chinese people do not seem to know much about this animal, and the folk usually refer to jackals as "jackals", "red-haired dogs" and so on.
In fact, the mystery of the jackal is also related to many mythical rumors, such as many post-80s and post-90s living in the countryside, when they were young, they were frightened by adults with jackals, as long as they did not obey and make emotions, adults would say "Wait for the jackals to take away the unruly children."
Although most children do not know what a jackal is, this sentence has been tried and tested.
Before the 1980s, jackals still lived in most parts of the country, and many stories and legends about jackals were born in this period, and one of them is an example for everyone to feel.
It is said that the jackal is a very human beast, which not only does not harm people, but also protects humans. When people walk in the forest at night, the jackal will follow the protection all the way, until people go out of the forest, the jackal will return to the depths of the forest; when people who spend the night in the forest, the jackal will sprinkle urine around the rest of the person, because other beasts are very afraid of the jackal, so after smelling the urine of the jackal, they dare not go near humans.
The story aside, the jackal is actually an ordinary canine, a species endemic to Asia. The world's jackals can be divided into 11 subspecies, and there are 5 species in China, which are:
Sichuan jackals living in parts of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Sichuan;
East Asian jackals living in places such as the three eastern provinces;
Kashmiri jackals living in the southwest and southern Tibet;
West Asian jackals living around Xinjiang;
Chinese jackals that live in much of the south of the Yangtze River.
Although there are certain differences in appearance between different subspecies, they are generally similar, and the coat color of the body is reddish brown, the snout and tail are black brown, and the abdomen is off-white.
Jackals are not large, weighing mostly 15-32 kg and 85-130 cm in length as adults, which is about the same size as a medium-sized dog, but compared with dogs, the jackal's snout is more pointed and has a little fox appearance, so it looks more cunning.
Jackals are highly adaptable, resistant to both cold and heat, and in the past they were widely distributed in North Asia, South Asia, and most of Southeast Asia. Flocks forage, often frolicking in the forest and between the fields, mainly wild boars and other ungulates, and occasionally prey on livestock, but rarely attack people.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" >China cut "jackal" history</h1>
The mystery of the jackal is also related to its rapid disappearance. Jackals used to have a wide range of distribution, and they often appeared on the edge of forests and on trails outside the village, so people were accustomed to the frolicking of jackals because they were naturally playful.
Unlike the tiger and leopard, the jackal's disappearance speed seems to be an overnight event, which is unexpected. It was as if they could still be seen frolicking in the fields in the evening, and when they woke up, they disappeared.
There are many reasons for the disappearance of jackals, both in retaliatory hunting, by habitat destruction, and by the decline of their own populations.
After the 1950s, China's tiger plague became more and more serious, and the contradiction between humans and animals intensified, so many places began to hunt tigers, leopards and other "pests" in large quantities, resulting in a sharp decline in the number of tigers and leopards in the 50s and 80s.
The disappearance of jackals, almost immediately after the tiger and leopard, especially in the 80s, was the period when jackals disappeared the fastest, and by the 90s, it was difficult to see jackals in the wild.
As a ferocious predator, the jackal will prey on livestock, so angry people will often retaliate against it, the most lethal of which is to wrap the explosives in the internal organs of pork, causing the jackals to nibble wildly, and then detonate, killing and injuring a large piece. In addition, poisons, traps, etc. are also commonly used methods.
Affected by a variety of factors, jackals quickly became extinct in many places, and their number was so small that it was even thought that the entire species was extinct.
In the early years, a large number of scientific research teams went into the mountains to look for the traces of jackals, but almost all hoped to fail, until 2013, the infrared camera set up in the Heishuihe Nature Reserve in Sichuan captured the jackals, and the news about jackals in many parts of the country has gradually increased, indicating that the number of jackals is gradually rising.
According to expert assessments, the current survival status of jackals is still not optimistic, in the endangered level, the global wild population is 949-2215.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" > jackal stands in front of the tiger and leopard with ferocity</h1>
The tiger and leopard is considered to be the top predator in nature, a creature standing at the top of the food chain, but in the Chinese saying "jackal, tiger and leopard", the position of the jackal is placed in front of the tiger and leopard.
Other countries also think that the jackal is more powerful than the tiger and leopard, for example, there have been many incidents of jackals and Bengal tigers fighting in India, the two sides fought for food, although the tiger bit and killed more than a dozen jackals, but the jackals still did not flinch, but the more courageous the war, and finally the tiger was exhausted, and the jackals found the opportunity to rush up and bite the tiger alive.
Are jackals really more powerful than tigers? The story in India is impossible to verify, but the scientific analysis is almost impossible, which is determined by environmental factors, in the forest ecosystem, the terrain is complex and there is a lot of shelter, which is not conducive to group action, and the tiger, as the flagship species under the ecosystem, is very good at woodland warfare.
At this point, we refer to the interspecific relationship between the Siberian tiger and the gray wolf, in the colloquialism, there is also a saying that "the tiger cannot stand the wolf", but the reality is that the gray wolf in the Russian Far East has been suppressed by the Siberian tiger before the 20th century, resulting in a very slow population development, and the number is at a very low level.
In the Nalipoki Forest in Belarus, scientists have found a team of 5 wolves attacking a bear, and the bear was able to escape because it entered a spruce forest.
It can be seen that the team does not have the advantage in fighting in the forest, the lion is surrounded by hyenas in the grassland, it is difficult to get out, and the tiger encounters the jackal in the forest, and still has the ability to escape and protect itself.
Judging from the current authoritative data, there is no evidence of the strength or weakness between the jackal herd and the tiger, but people put the jackal in the number one position of the four major beasts, which naturally has a certain reason. It may be related to the ferocity of the jackal, whether it is infighting or hunting, the jackal, the tiger and the leopard, and the jackal is the fiercest.
Jackals are notoriously fierce, they can form large-scale groups, occasionally fights between group members, unlike the spotted hyena "point to the end", jackals infighting, often also bloody, bitten off ears, nose, is a common phenomenon.
When hunting, the jackal is also more ferocious, the members rush up without distinction to bite desperately, often the prey has not yet lost its breath, the jackal has begun to fight for food, the whole feeding scene is very ferocious, the jackal's fierce name is therefore far away.
Talking about the centuries-old changes of China's jackals, what have these beasts experienced?