Wolves

Man has for centuries considered the wolf as a villain animal. This is a legendary reputation that lacks truth. Otherwise how could we then explain that the wolf is the direct ancestor of the dog, man’s best friend?

Wolves live in packs that obey to a strict hierarchy and are ruled by a dominant pair. Wolves are clever animals that know how to avoid traps and to mislead their hunters: when moving over snow, wolves will put their paws on the prints left by the wolf in front of them, so that hunters are unable to track the number of members of a pack.

Male wolves are larger and heavier than females and their body size is close to that of a German shepherd dog, though wolves have bigger and stronger skulls.

Wolves will feed in a variety of prey such as deer and rabbits, domesticated cattle and even dogs.

Though they almost never attack humans, wolves are hated by many people, especially in rural areas where the wolves’ survival enters in competition or in conflict with the management and exploitation of natural resources made by man.

In regions where humans knew how to develop an harmonious relationship with the land, the big herbivores, wild carnivores and man himself, a peaceful coexistence is possible between wild animals (wolves in this particular case) and human populations. This is what seems to be occurring in the Natural Park of Montesinho, in Portugal, where the local population has gradually been changing their attitude towards their surrounding environment, therefore creating the necessary conditions for the protection of the Iberian wolf.

The wolf population in Portugal occurs mainly in the northern mountains, from Minho to Trás-os-Montes, and there are signs that it is increasing again, probably as a result of the presence of a larger number of prey like deer and other related cervids. The wolves cross the border and move into the regions of Galicia, Leon and Castile. At the boundary areas of Beiras and Alto Alentejo wolves are also making a coming back after the heavy decline of the last decades.

For more information about the Iberian wolf (from Portugal and neighbouring Spain), ask your parents to take you on a visit to the Iberian Wolf Recovery Centre, in Malveira, near Mafra.

Foxes

Foxes are an extraordinary animal thanks to their adaptability to the various changing habitats and to their capacity of surviving under poor feeding conditions.

The major preys of foxes are birds and small mammals like rabbits, hares and rats, but when shortage of food is widely felt, foxes will survive for more or less long periods only feeding on fruits and buds.

This is most likely the reason why foxes have been spared of extinction though they have been persecuted by hunters for centuries. Or should the reason be that they are very clever and smart like Salta-Pocinhas, the fox hero of the famous Tale of the Fox by the great Portuguese writer Aquilino Ribeiro?

Jackals

Like hyenas, jackals are scavengers because they feed on the carcass of dead animals that were not killed to be eaten by predators. Jackals therefore play an important role in the ecosystem by avoiding the decomposition of dead animal remains.

Jackals are small to medium-sized animals that live in the savannah. Jackals usually hunt alone or as a pair, but they may occasionally assemble in small packs to scavenge a carcass or hunt a small antelope.

The Egyptian god Anubis was a jackal-headed god.

Coyotes

Coyotes are also called prairie wolves, but unlike their cousins the true wolves coyotes are small and hold their tail down when running unlike wolves who hold it horizontally.

Coyotes once lived primarily in open prairies and deserts, but they are now adapted to the changing American landscapes and they even became omnivorous; their main preys are however rabbits, rodents and small birds.

Dingoes

Though commonly accepted as a wild animal, the dingo is the closest cousin to the domesticated dog and most probably the only true pure-breed dog in the world. In fact, the dingo is a feral dog. It is believed that it descends from a domesticated dog species that has been brought thousands of years ago from Asia to Australia, where it escaped domestication and returned to its wild state.

Fennec foxes

The fennec, also known as desert fox for being found in the Sahara desert, has very large ears and therefore an acute hearing sense. Its large ears used as fans also serve to dissipate heat, which is a real advantage for an animal living in the hot desert of North Africa!

Fennec foxes live in burrows they dig in the desert sand, and for surviving they feed on everything they can find: grass, roots, small birds and rodents…

Fennec is the name of a new web browser of the Mozilla Foundation. The Fennec is also the mascot of the Algerian football team called “Les Fennecs” (The Fennecs)!

The African wild dog

This canid is, as the name implies, the African wild dog; it is also known as spotted dog or painted wolf. It lives in packs of 6 to 10 individuals, and their hierarchy is quite different from that of wolves: though the pack is usually ruled by a male, they have a submission-based hierarchy instead of a dominance-based one; their dominance is therefore bloodshed.

These wild dogs roam very large territories, always moving from one place to the other in the savannah, but when there are pups in the pack, they look for an abandoned burrow dug by other animals and stay there until the pups are fit to follow the pack.

The African wild dog feeds mainly on gazelles and young gnus, and their hunting strategy is quite interesting: the pack comes openly close to the herd, which immediately runs away. The dogs then start running after the member of the herd that shows signs of being weak or too young to follow the rest of the herd and that was left behind.

African wild dogs keep very strong bonds among them: adults go hunting in turns so that pups do not be left alone and unguarded, and they eat they prey quickly before hyenas show up. When back to the burrow, they regurgitate meat for those that remained at the burrow during the hunt, such as the dominant female and the pups. They will also feed other pack members, such as the sick, injured, or very old that cannot keep up.