It is their voices that turn humans against jackals – not what they actually do. We have been repeatedly asking people of Stanevo and other surrounding villages: have jackals done you any harm? The answer has been invariably negative.
‘No, there has been no harm,’ Aunt Milka, who lives in Stanevo’s very last house, has said. She went on to explain. ‘You see, they are not like foxes. A fox will jump over the fence or use some chink to get inside. And then there will be havoc in the chicken coop. Jackals will never dare do such things. But they howl so horribly at my doorstep! One can go out of their mind.’
There are various folk theories about the meaning and purpose of jackal howling. The most popular among them is the beaters-and-killers one. It is based on the way wild pigs are hunted. The animals are set on the run by beaters with dogs while the killers wait in a line to shoot at them on approach. Something like that is imagined to be done by jackals. One part of the group howl to scare everything alive, while the killers wait in line and grab whatever comes their way.
In this way, jackal howling means devastation of the countryside. Hunters who kill jackals appear as saviours in this narrative. To quote the journalist who reported the killing of sixteen jackals in the nearby village of Ignatovo: ‘In a single day, the sharp-shooters brought down 16 jackals, thus saving scores of birds and hares from attacks by the predators.’ (more in an earlier post "The Mother")
The opinion of specialists is very different from this scenario. In essence, it is that howling is a peaceful way of protecting a family group territory. Neighbouring groups tell each other where they are and thus violent conflicts between the groups are avoided.
My father has some reserves about this opinion of the reigning consensus. His doubts come from a well-established fact: jackals are primarily foragers, not hunters. Further, they do not find their food in packs like the wolves, but individually search far and wide over a large territory to find deposits of human waste. Does a group’s howling intend to deter other groups from accessing dumps over a territory often comprising many square kilometres? My father doubts that.
His answer is based on another well-known fact: even when rival groups clash over a resource, they avoid blood-letting fights. Or, as the villagers would say: ‘Jackals never fight!’.
What could the answer be, given such experience? Why are jackals howling – as villagers claim, every single night? (This last should be taken as an exaggeration: there are many nights when jackals do not howl.)
The answer my father offers is contained in a key term of his research: a focal resource.
The importance of a focal resource.
What is a focal resource? This is a waste-dump which is high-yielding and regularly renewed – ideally, on a daily basis. An additional felicity condition – again in the ideal case – is proximity to the home base, so it can be controlled easily by a resident family group. Such a family, in my father’s terminology, ensure for themselves the status of being the ‘hosts’ of such a resource. When there is such a resource, they may decide to move their home-base as close to it as safety concerns would allow.
The bait-site at Km 727 satisfies all felicity conditions. It is close to the family home and thus it gives the family host status by ‘divine right’, as it were. It is close to water, which is another vital necessity. It also allows use by the Mother even at denning time. As explained earlier on (Family Members and the Senior Adults Rule), she could briefly leave her pups for darting down to the water-source (the river), and on the way to it or back she could get a bite or two at the bait-site. In the end, my father’s opinion was that group howling’s purpose was to defend host status in respect of a focal resource. It was, he thought, that keeping the focal resource from others was the whole point of group howling – not striving to keep rivals away from the whole of the foraging territory. Wolves did that in defence of their hunting territories, but with them it was different. In case of intrusion, they were prepared to attack the trespassers in force and not refrain from entering into life-or-death fighting, whatever the costs. Jackals thought differently about the matter.
Studying voices.
The question now was: how could such a hypothesis be proved? My father, supported by his colleagues from the Natural History Museum in Sofia, concentrated on documenting and analysing what he termed close chorus howling.
By that he meant howling by the whole of Boldy’s family, carried out in immediate proximity to the bait-site/camp area . What this amounted to was that the group gathered on the edge of the bluff rising behind the camp and from there they would howl with all their might.
In the typical case, the whole event would unfold in the following way. A dominant jackal from a neighboring group opened up with a long wail in the direction of Boldy’s family home. In the clip below, it is the Uncle calling the cubs, but in principle, the posture and enunciation is the same when a neighbouring leader initiates a chorus howling event:
The sonogram of the event shows how the howling event unfolds from there on.
The sonogram shows that the initial wailing call (a) lasted for 25 sec. It was then joined in by more jackals from the neighbouring group (b). That lasted for another 10 sec. At that point a new and louder wailing announced the presence of the bait-site hosts (yellow vertical line, c). That wailing was by Big Man. The slightly thicker hertz line of the sound indicates that it is nearer to the mic of the sound recorder. On the ground, Big Man’s voice is still at about 300 m from the mic, coming from east – the dominant male of the hosts has run eastwards of the family home, along the edge of the bluff. It can be supposed that Big Man was wailing towards the incoming neighbours, standing up on a mound.
From there on, the senior and junior adults of the host group join in stopping the advance of neighbours (d). They are slightly nearer to the family home now: the hertz line is a notch thicker. The wailing of the hosts develops into a ua-ua chorus as it moves directly above the bait-site and camp. Accordingly, its amplitude shoots up (e). Finally, the chorus develops into staccato screams – this is the culminating yipping-phase. This last part (f) is of an amplitude exceeding the recording span of the instrument. It can be added here, that this last part of ear-piercing screams, sung in the darkness of night at one’s doorstep, is what plays on the nerves of villagers. As they say, it is like babies crying at the top of their voices. At which point grannies run into their houses and bolt the doors, crossing themselves before the nearest icon.
But what was all that howling about? Certainly, not to scare grannies or cause panic among the small game in the fields.
To begin with the first wail – the one from the neighbours. My father thinks that they are checking to see whether there will be a response from the leader or another senior adult from the hosts. And from there on: where these seniors can gather the whole family around themselves. The opposite would mean that the rest of the family is scattered over the range and, in such a case, intrusion may be attempted. There will be some shouting, but a few bites can still be snatched. Having the whole family around the focal resource and clashing with it is an undesirable option.
This is from the challenging side. From that of the defendants the chorus demonstrates that the whole family is not scattered over the outer territory but stands fast by the bait-site. It can be said here that the provocation of the neighbours works to mobilize the group. One may even venture to say that from the perspective of the jackal tribe as a whole, such challenge-defense sequences serve a common purpose: to keep all the separate families in inner unity. For, in the final account, one family is a challenger today, and a defender tomorrow.
An important detail here is that this type of long-distance vocalization typically occurs at prime-time: about an hour after sunset. This is the time when a resource is at its richest. It will be usually exhausted by midnight. This provides a context for howling duels. The challenging group – the eastern neighbours in our case – will be checking whether the hosts are around their focal resource when it offers its best: in terms of quantity, as well as of quality parts in it (like meat or fish). In case no one responds to their wailing, they would feel free to have the first pick. So, grannies and hares should not feel threatened. It is not about them, but about an interesting waste-heap close by. Nothing personal one might say.
Another such event – recorded a few days later – illustrates a variant of such a neighbours vs. hosts howling match:
As we can see in the sonogram, the event again happened at prime-time: at a few minutes before ten, which is roughly an hour after sunset. The duration of the two events is similar – 1 min. 37 sec. in the first case, 1 min. 49 sec. in the second. The difference is that the event in Fig. 3 shows the neighbours wailing longer: 1.01 min (a-b) before the break-off (c) occurs. By ear, the ‘break-off voice’ (yellow line) is clearly recognizable as again that of the dominant host - Big Man. To his voice those of the sub-dominant adult members of the group join (d). Individuation is again based on earlier records, as well as on ‘by ear’ knowledge of the ‘voices’ of the various family members. Finally, the yip-phase (e) again mobilizes vocalization not only of the adults, but also of the 2+ sub-dominant (‘Pretender’), and the three 1+-year olds. This younger cohort (and later in the summer – with the cubs joining in) yip-vocalize at a high pitch and very distinctly. By the end of the yip-phase, the sound quickly falls and trails off in the western (upriver) direction.
There are a number of other details to notice about such events. Apart from timing (happening within the prime-time slot), and duration (1.5 – 2 min.), they concern the type of weather at the time of the event, as well as the moon-phase.
When looking at the weather, the academic opinion is that such events (long-distance howling) tend to happen at dry and windless nights. When consulting with my father’s notes, all recorded cases – over a hundred to date - satisfy this condition. The only deviation he has registered is that close howling may happen in conditions of light breeze in the after-sunset hours.
Such was indeed the case of the two nights we have picked up as illustrations. There is a note in his diary of ‘a light easterly breeze’ on both nights. From the point of view of the challengers – the neighbouring group – that was well. Their voices would carry a longer distance. As they were most likely to be of the Pomodiana group, i.e., with their family home four km. downriver, they could start wailing even from there, while advancing towards Km 727 all the time. This reading of the situation is corroborated by the barking of dogs which was registered as soon as the leading jackal of the Pomodiana gang opened up. The only dogs at that end were the seven dogs chained at various corners all around the fence of Villa Pomodiana. It is the case that dogs often begin barking as soon as jackals start howling from a nearby place. The same thing can be said about humans picnicking on the bank – some would begin wailing at the jackals, imitating their voices. Sometimes, jackals wail back.
Moon phase.
According to a popular belief, jackals howl when the moon is full. From the academic point of view, no certain opinion has been expressed, to our knowledge (but there is always the chance we may have missed something). In any case, we rely on what we have heard about the closest relatives – the coyotes (Canis latrans).
Coyote researchers have come to the conclusion that the situation is opposite to folk theories: coyote group howling (or ‘chorus’ howling as my father calls it) is more typical of new moon periods.
When it comes to jackals, my father’s data is not supportive of either opinion: the folk one or the academic. In fact, the two illustrative examples, the one of the night of 27-28 April, 2021, is at a full moon phase. More than this: the very next night has a ‘Super Moon’ in the skies. The other, of 30-1May, 2021, is of the last quarter (before new moon).
It thus appears that there is still a lot to learn about jackal vocalization. Chorus howling tends to occur mostly from after sunset to before midnight, but my father has heard it much later and even during the day. Dry windless nights are most favourable, but sometimes choruses can be heard on windy (but not stormy) nights. Least we seem to know about lunar influences on howling. There is a lot to learn yet.
