African wolf

African Golden Wolf
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Canidae
Genus:	Canis
Species:	C. anthus
Binomial name
Canis anthus F. Cuvier, 1820
Subspecies
C. a. lupaster C. a. algirensis C. a. bea C. a. riparius C. a. soudanicus C. a. anthus

The African golden wolf (Canis anthus), also known as the African wolf or thoas, is a distinct taxon or species of canid. In the past the subspecies here were classified as either members of the golden jackal and/or one - the Egyptian jackal - being a subspecies of the grey wolf. These animals are native in the northern regions of Africa.

Taxonomic history

Skull of African wolf (left) and common golden jackal (right)

During the 19th century, the golden jackals of Africa were considered separate species from those in Eurasia. Majority of the taxonomic history of this animal center around one its subspecies, the Egyptian jackal as this subspecies is the most wolf-like out of all of them.

Aristotle was the first European to write of wolves in Egypt, mentioning that they were smaller than the Greek kind. Georg Ebers wrote of the wolf being among the sacred animals of Egypt, describing it as a "smaller variety" of wolf to those of Europe, and noting how the name Lykopolis, the Ancient Egyptian city dedicated to Anubis, means "city of the wolf". Hemprich and Ehrenberg, upon seeing similarities between North African jackals and wolves in 1832, gave the animal the binomial name Canis lupaster. Likewise, Thomas Henry Huxley, upon noting the similarities between the skulls of lupaster and Indian wolves, classed the animal as a subspecies of grey wolf. However, the animal was classed as a golden jackal by Ernst Schwarz in 1926. This classification remained unquestioned until 1981, when zoologist Walter Ferguson of the Tel Aviv University argued in favour of lupaster being a subspecies of grey wolf based on cranial measurements, stating that the classing of the animal as a jackal was based solely on the animal's small size, and predated the discovery of C. l. arabs, which is intermediate in size between C. l. lupus and lupaster.

The debate was rekindled in December 2002, when a canid was sighted in Eritrea's Danakil Desert, whose appearance didn't correspond to that of the golden jackal or the six other recognised species of the area, but strongly resembled that of the grey wolf. The area had previously been largely unexplored, due to its harsh climate and embroilment in the Eritrean War of Independence and subsequent Eritrean–Ethiopian War, though local Afar tribesmen knew of the animal, and referred to it as wucharia (wolf). In 2011, 2,055 base pairs from the mtDNA of "Egyptian jackal" samples taken from the Ethiopian Highlands were analyzed and compared with those of grey wolves and other wolf-like canids. The results showed, with 100% bootstrap support, that the canid was indeed a grey wolf. The results also revealed that the animal's range was much more extensive than previously thought, as the Ethiopian samples taken from two localities were located approximately 2,500 km southeast of Egypt. A further study confirmed the taxon's presence in Algeria, Mali and Senegal, thus expanding its range around 6,000 km west of the original study. Genetic analyses indicated that the African wolf is, alongside the Indian and Himalayan wolf, an ancient subspecies originating from before the radiation of Holarctic wolves (which gave rise to dogs, North American and most Eurasian grey wolf subspecies). However, unlike the Indian and Himalayan populations, the African wolf shows much more nucleotide and haplotype diversity, indicating a larger ancestral population, and an effective extant population of around 80,000 females.

In 2015, however, a genomic study has found that all African taxa and populations of golden jackals (including the Egyptian jackal) are more closely related to the grey wolf than they are to the other golden jackal subspecies that are found in Eurasia, having been genetically isolated for at least a million years.

Subspecies

Subspecies	Trinomial authority	Description	Range	Synonyms
Algerian wolf Canis a. algirensis	Wagner, 1841	Darker than C. a. aureus, with a tail marked with three dusky rings, it is equal in size to the red fox.	Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia	barbarus (C. E. H. Smith, 1839) grayi (Hilzheimer, 1906) tripolitanus (Wagner, 1841)
Senegalese wolf Canis a. anthus	F. Cuvier, 1820		Senegal	senegalensis (C. E. H. Smith, 1839)
Serengeti wolf Canis a. bea	Heller, 1914		Kenya, Northern Tanzania
Canis a. riparius	Hemprich and Ehrenberg, 1832	A dwarf subspecies measuring only a dozen inches in shoulder height, it is generally of a greyish-yellow colour, mingled with only a small proportion of black. The muzzle and legs are more decidedly yellow, and the underparts are white.	Somalia and coast of Ethiopia and Eritrea	hagenbecki (Noack, 1897) mengesi (Noack, 1897) somalicus (Lorenz, 1906)
Variegated wolf Canis a. soudanicus	Thomas, 1903	A small subspecies standing 38 cm (15 in) at the shoulder, and measuring 102 cm (40 in) in length. The fur is generally pale stone-buff, with blotches of black.	Sudan and Somalia	doederleini (Hilzheimer, 1906) nubianus (Cabrera, 1921) thooides (Hilzheimer, 1906) variegatus (Cretzschmar, 1826)

See also

• Grey wolf
• Jackal
• Ethiopian wolf