Natural History

From Richard Lydekker’s Game Animals of Africa (1908):

On account of its rarity and zoological interest a few lines may be devoted to the cuberow, or so-called Abyssinian wolf, of the highlands of central Abyssinia, which, although described by Ruppell so long ago as 1835, was scarcely known in England, except by its skull, till a few years ago, when skins were brought home by Major Powell-Cotton.

Although called a wolf by the older writers, the cuberow is regarded by Mr. Oscar Neumann (as quoted by the Hon. Walter Rothschild in the appendix to Powell-Cotton’s Sporting Trip to Abyssinia) as an overgrown fox; its habits, gait, and actions generally being described as essentially those of a fox. The length and slenderness of the muzzle of the skull (in which the premolar teeth are small and widely sundered) is another fox-like character. More important is the fact that the skull is fox-like in having the upper surface of the projection behind the socket of the eye hollow instead of convex.

Mr. Pocock, in the work cited under the heading of jackals, refuses, however, to admit the foxy affinity of the cuberow, and places it between the wolves and the jackals, although remarking that it differs more from the former than does the Egyptian representative of the latter. It is certainly neither a wolf nor a jackal.

In size the cuberow is stated by Mr. Pocock not to exceed the Egyptian jackal; while its prevailing colour is given as light yellowish red speckled with black. The tail, which is black-tipped, is darker above than the back; the lower surface of its basal portion, together with the margins of the mouth, the chest, under-parts, and the inner surfaces of the limbs being white. The total length of the animal is about 50 inches, of which 10 are taken up by the tail.

Even in its native home, the mountains of Simien, the cuberow is a rare animal, although several examples were seen alive by Major Powell-Cotton during his adventurous expedition to that region (pg. 462),

This animal is currently regarded as the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis). Its exact relationship to the other wolf-like canid isn’t exactly clear, but it is interfertile with domestic dogs. Some earlier mitochondrial DNA studies have suggested that is nothing more than an early offshoot of the Canis lupus line (hence the current name of “Ethiopian wolf”), while the genomic analysis study on the dog family suggests that it split off from the other wolf-like canids before the golden jackal did.

Whatever its exact position within the dog family, this account by Lydekker shows that the Ethiopian wolf was quite rare a hundred years ago. Although it lives in packs, it lives almost exclusively on rodents– the real Farley Mowat wolf– but that hasn’t stopped it from being persecuted for being a livestock killer. Its current problems are almost exclusively the result of its interactions with domestic dog, which carry canine diseases and occasionally “pollute” the gene pool through crossbreeding.  A dog-born rabies outbreak in Bale  Mountains National Park more than halved the population, which had the largest extant population of these dogs.

It is currently the most endangered of all wild dogs, and it may follow the warrah or Falkland Islands wolf into extinction. If it does,  the Ethiopian wolf and the warrah will be the first dog species to become extinct within historic times.

It is fascinating that so many people regarded this animal as a fox for no other reason than its red coloration. Would the same people have classified the Pomeranian or the shiba inu as a fox?  What about the darker golden retrievers?

Of course, its name has changed quite a bit over the years. When I was a kid, I saw a PBS Nature program about these animals, and it referred to them as the “Simien jackal.”  The animals were once quite common in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia, which is where the other population of these wolves can be found. It made sense that they were jackals, but unlike golden jackals, it was noted that it was weird that they lived in large packs and lived almost exclusively on a type of mole-rat.

And now that it seems that the consensus seems to be shifting away from the theory that it was an early offshoot of Canis lupus, I wouldn’t be surprised if we starting calling it a jackal once again.

I would have called it the red wolf, but that name has already been taken– by a coyote!