I call these the Farley Mowat wolves.
Farley Mowat claimed in his famous book, Never Cry Wolf, that wolves in the Canadian arctic lived on mostly mice and lemmings.
Of course, those wolves do eat small prey, but they do take caribou and moose.
The Ethiopian wolf, which is not the same species as those in Canada, does live mostly on rodents.
They live in the Semien and Bale Mountains of Ethiopia. They live in large family groups, but unlike the Holarctic wolf, they don’t band together to hunt much larger prey.
Instead, they forage alone in alpine meadows, stalking rodents in this fashion.
When I was a kid, these animals were called Semien jackals.
But then a mitochondrial DNA study was released that suggested that Semien jackals were actually recent derivatives of the Holarctic wolf that became isolated in Africa.
However, the phylogenetic tree that was drawn from sequencing the dog genome revealed that these animals were actually more distantly related to wolves and dogs than golden jackals and coyotes are.
We could technically call them Semien jackals and be correct.
But the name “Ethiopian wolf” has stuck.
Plus, the Ethiopian wolf is quite endangered, and the notion that this animal was somehow a unique wolf of Africa increased its prestige in the public eye.
Of course, it turns out that there is an actual wolf subspecies in Africa.
But it’s likely not endangered, and it is difficult distinguish this animal from the golden jackal.
For years, these animals were classified with golden jackals, but they should be recognized as wolves.
So it’s all messed up.
Ethiopian wolves are wolves that live in Africa, but they aren’t African wolves.
Just like so many other things, our language has become confusing.
