do you have any tells for someone not familiar with non-american animals you suggest looking for to determine if a skull is a side stripe vs black backed jackal? I you made that absolutely lovely comparison photoset but I can't for the life of me see any obvious differences that can't be chalked up to like, angles or something x-x

Oh gosh their skulls are terribly difficult to tell apart! I only noticed I had one after I had gotten a few more black-backed jackal skulls and was like ‘huh this one is a little different’ lol. There’s just not a lot of pictures or info on them because they’re very shy and elusive and people mistake them for black-backed jackals quite often.

Side-striped jackals (top) have a much narrower skull then the black-backed jackals and on average are slightly larger. These two skulls are around the same size, but the bbj is a couple years older than the ssj who was only about 1-2 years old . They also have thinner zygomatics since thier jaws aren’t as strong as bbjs. They eat a lot more fruit and bugs then bbjs do.

Side-striped jackals (left) also have super weird incisors that don’t overlap like most canids and are more blunt. Thier premolars are also closer together than black-backed jackals.