The animal is not protected in Egypt and is often persecuted as it is considered a threat to livestock. The authors call for the African wolf to be assessed individually, especially considering evidence that the animal is rare.

However the new African wolf is classified, researchers argue the discovery must change how the animal is viewed in conservation. Currently, gray wolf subspecies number in the thirties, and distinction between species and subspecies continues to be debated for a number of them. The study does not appear to make a recommendation whether or not this new wolf should be considered a unique species in its own right or another subspecies of the grey wolf ( Canis lupus). Long suspected by some biologists, genetic research has shown that the Egyptian jackal is actually a wolf. Ethiopian wolves, which are a unique species of canids, are older still. According to the study, Indian, Himalayan, and the new African wolf, broke off from the gray wolf before it moved north, colonizing Europe, northern Asia, and the Americas, further subdividing into different subspecies. In fact, researchers believe the animal is older than well-known wolves of the northern hemisphere.

The genetic data also points to an early origin for the Egyptian jackal/African wolf. GenBank is an open-access nucleotide database. “We could hardly believe our own eyes when we found wolf DNA that did not match anything in GenBank,” lead author, Dr Eli Rueness, said in a press release. The new wolf, dubbed by researchers as the African wolf, is most closely related to the Himalayan wolf. New genetic research in the open-access journal PLoS ONE finds that the Egyptian jackal is Africa’s only member of the gray wolf family. The Egyptian jackal, which may have been the inspiration for the Egyptian god Anubis, is actually not a jackal at all but a member of the wolf family.

Jackal egypt