I Know none of this work is paid or funded but at around 0200hrs I was thinking that foxes, jackals and coyotes have similar lifestyles out in the wild and their prey can be similar -rats, mice, rabbits. Coyotes are very good at lowering rodent numbers as are foxes and jackals are similar. The question that came to mind was whether illnesse4s, etc. of coyotes and jackals were similar?
Finding out depends on whether the various coyote organisations and jackal studies actually carry out post mortem examinations. PMs can give you a good overall view of the health of a species in an area and it would be interesting to find out what, if any, parallels there are with these canids.
For that reason I sent out emails today (where necessary changed to "coyote" or "jackal"):
"Hello.
"My name is Terry Hooper-Scharf and I a naturalist specialising in wild canids, felids and some mustelids. I set up the British Fox and Canid Study in 1976 and over the last two years we have managed to get (fight for) official examinations of non-road kill foxes. Obviously motor vehicles kill wolves, coyotes as well as other animals such as puma and just in the City of Bristol for 2023 we recorded 257 fox deaths due to cars.
"One thing our Fox Deaths Project has shown through post mortem examinations is that foxes look externally unmarked and all of the damage is internal which led to many claims that someone was poisoning the foxes. What our pathologist has found during post mortem examination is a prevalence of worms such as heart and lung worms as well as Uraemia/kidney problems/verminous pneumonia with prey likely the sources.
"What I am interested in finding out is whether any post mortems on coyotes have shown that they are similarly affected?
"If interested I can forward a couple of the post mortem reports to show what has been found?
"I look forward to hearing from you when convenient.
Regards
Terry"
It will be interesting to see what the responses are.
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