What is the food chain of a golden jackal?

Answer 1

Golden jackals are opportunistic feeders, being both predators and scavengers, and will readily eat refuse and vegetation during certain seasons. In the former Soviet Union, jackals mainly hunt hares, small rodents, pheasants, partridges, ducks, coots, moorhens and passerines. They readily eat lizards, snakes, frogs, insects, fish and molluscs. During the winter period, they will kill many nutrias and waterfowl. During such times, jackals will surplus kill and cache what they do not eat. Jackals will feed on fruits such as pears, hawthorn, dogwood and the cones of Common Medlars. In Spring, they will dig out bulbs and the roots of wild sugar cane. In Summer, jackals drink regularly, and stick to water bodies. During times of drought, jackals will dig holes in dried channels and drink the water collected in the ground, as well as eating dead fish and birds descending to drink. Near human habitations, jackals will feed near slaughterhouses, landfills and cattle burial places. In Dagestan in the 1920s, jackals frequently ate near railway lines, feeding on food remains thrown out of trains by passengers.[5] In Hungary, their most frequent prey are common voles and bank voles.[28] Information on the diet of jackals in North-Eastern Italy is scant, but it is certain that they prey on small roe deers and hares.[24] In the Serengeti, golden jackals feed primarily on dung beetles, grasshoppers and crickets, though they will also eat gerbils, springhares, hares, ground birds and their eggs, lizards, snakes, frogs, fishes, bulbs, berries and fallen fruit. Although they readily follow alighting vultures, scavenging only constitutes 3-6% of their diet, due to competition with spotted hyenas. They tend to only scavenge when an animal dies or when a larger predator makes a kill within their home range. When they come across unfamiliar meat, jackals have been observed to rub the sides of their necks on the food and roll on their backs. During the wildebeest calving season, golden jackals will feed almost exclusively on their afterbirth.[4] Although capable of killing animals 3 times their size, they usually only target sick or newborn animals. Otherwise, they will rarely attack healthy animals even of their own weight. Overall, African golden jackals do not target mammals as actively as black-backed jackals.[26] Jackals in Turkey have been known to eat the eggs of the endangered green turtle.[29] In India, they consume much fruit and vegetable matter such as mangoes, cashew, fishtail palm and jackfruits, as well as melons, cucumbers and maize.[4] Pairs of jackals have been observed to hunt capped langurs in north-western Bangladesh.[30] Immature Northern Plains Gray Langurs are also rarely preyed upon.[31]