Just to bump the thread:
1. (like I asked above) were these the only jackals in Aus at the time?
2. did the jackals ever breed (presumably not with so much stress?)?
3. when did this mix end?
There were two jackals in with the chimps at taronga.I went to adelaide zoo in 1984 they also jackals.
I don't have any more information about breeding etc.
I've just been browsing through some archived newspapers and there were at least two reported shipments of animals from Africa to Taronga in 1947, both of which included jackals apparently. That's less than forty years before this photo so it seems likely the three which were at Taronga in 1980 (and perhaps the ones at Adelaide too) were the last remnants of ones bred from the 1947 imports.
I've just been browsing through some archived newspapers and there were at least two reported shipments of animals from Africa to Taronga in 1947, both of which included jackals apparently. That's less than forty years before this photo so it seems likely the three which were at Taronga in 1980 (and perhaps the ones at Adelaide too) were the last remnants of ones bred from the 1947 imports.
You can also include Black-backed jackals at Melbourne too, circa late 70s/early 80s. They were part of a long row of canids: dingoes, wolves, coyotes, hunting dogs - somewhere along the perimeter fence.
Until I read through the comments on this picture to verify it, even I didn't believe what I was seeing - a jackal in with the chimpanzees at Taronga Zoo? It's unsurprising one was killed by the chimps; and even less surprising the introduction of Patas monkeys was unsuccessful. I honestly don't know what they were thinking.
There's records of Casey- Taronga's first chimpanzee - brutally killing a macaque; so it was not unknown in the 1980's that chimpanzees have the potential to be highly aggressive to smaller species.
For those asking, the chimpanzee park opened in 1980 - shortly before Spitter gave birth to Sacha in June of that year.
