Golden jackal (Canis aureus L.) diet in Southern Greece

The diet of jackals was studied in the Mediterranean lowlands of Fokida and Samos island, Greece, by analyzing 127 scats collected between January 2002 and May 2003. Across all seasons frequencies of food items show that the most common items were mammals (frequency 42.7%, biomass 69.8%) and birds (12.0%, biomass 27.7%). Although the frequencies of plant material (27.3%) and insects (18.0%) were quite high, their biomass contribution was low (1.7%, 0.8% respectively). Most of the biomass consumed composed of mammals of domestic livestock origin (55.9%) which were presumably scavenged. This reveals the importance of this food item to the opportunistic jackals in wildlife-poor ecosystems like the anthropogenic Mediterranean lowlands. The occurrence of small mammals in the scats was very low while very few traces of grass and human refuse (such as leftovers of meals, plastic, pieces of paper etc.) were found in the diet of jackals. Furthermore, the findings support the opportunistic nature of a species capable to exploit any easily available food source.