Ethiopian wolf

Appearance

Its overall colour is ochre to rusty red, with dense whitish to pale ginger underfur. The fur of the throat, chest and underparts is white, with a distinct white band occurring around the sides of the neck. There is a sharp boundary between the red coat and white marks.

Its skull is very flat, with a long facial region accounting for 58% of the skull's total length. The canine teeth measure 14–22 mm in length, while the carnassials are relatively small.

Published measurements include mass about 19 and length about 101.

Range and habitat

The Ethiopian wolf is restricted to isolated pockets of Afroalpine grasslands and heathlands inhabited by Afroalpine rodents. Its ideal habitat extends from above the tree line around 3,200 to 4,500 m, with some wolves inhabiting the Bale Mountains being present in montane grasslands at 3,000 m. Although specimens were collected in Gojjam and northwestern Shoa at 2,500 m in the early 20th century, no recent records exist of the species occurring below 3,000 m.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Breeding

Packs are formed by dispersing males and a few females, that with the exception of the breeding female, are reproductively suppressed. Upon dying, a breeding female can be replaced by a resident daughter, though this increases the risk of inbreeding.

Courtship involves the breeding male following the female closely. The breeding female only accepts the advances of the breeding male, or males from other packs. Cooperative breeding and pseudopregnancy have been observed in Ethiopian wolves.

In crisis

It is one of the world's rarest canids, and Africa's most endangered carnivore. The species's current range is limited to seven isolated mountain ranges at altitudes of 3,000–4,500 m, with the overall adult population estimated at 360–440 individuals in 2011, more than half of them in the Bale Mountains. The Ethiopian wolf is listed as endangered by the IUCN, on account of its small numbers and fragmented range.

Threats include increasing pressure from expanding human populations, resulting in habitat degradation through overgrazing, and disease transference and interbreeding from free-ranging dogs. Six current Ethiopian wolf populations are known.

Ethiopian wolf is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Ethiopian wolf, Wikidata item Q188957. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.