Jackal in the context of "Vulpes"

Ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs were centered around a variety of complex rituals that were influenced by many aspects of Egyptian culture. Religion was a major contributor, since it was an important social practice that bound all Egyptians together. For instance, many of the Egyptian gods played roles in guiding the souls of the dead through the afterlife. With the evolution of writing, religious ideals were recorded and quickly spread throughout the Egyptian community. The solidification and commencement of these doctrines were formed in the creation of afterlife texts which illustrated and explained what the dead would need to know in order to complete the journey safely.

Egyptian religious doctrines included three afterlife ideologies: belief in an underworld, eternal life, and rebirth of the soul. The underworld, also known as the Duat, had only one entrance that could be reached by traveling through the tomb of the deceased. The initial image a soul would be presented with upon entering this realm was a corridor lined with an array of fascinating statues, including a variation of the hawk-headed god, Horus. The path taken to the underworld may have varied between kings and common people. After entry, spirits were presented to another prominent god, Osiris. Osiris would determine the virtue of the deceased's soul and grant those deemed deserving a peaceful afterlife. The Egyptian concept of 'eternal life' was often seen as being reborn indefinitely. Therefore, the souls who had lived their life elegantly were guided to Osiris to be born again.

Sky burial (Tibetan: བྱ་གཏོར་, Wylie: bya gtor, lit. "bird-scattered") is a funeral practice in which a corpse is placed on a mountaintop to decompose while exposed to the elements, or to be eaten by scavenging animals, especially crows, vultures, bears and jackals. Comparable excarnation practices are part of Zoroastrian burial rites where deceased are exposed to the elements and scavenger birds on stone structures called Dakhma. Sky burials are endemic to Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia, as well as in Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, and parts of India such as Sikkim and Zanskar. The locations of preparation and sky burial are understood in the Vajrayana Buddhist traditions as charnel grounds. Few such places remain operational today, as the practice was completely banned during the Cultural Revolution as a superstitious practice; in modern times, the practice is regulated by the Chinese Communist Party due to the ongoing decline of vulture populations.

The majority of Tibetan people and many Mongols adhere to Vajrayana Buddhism, which teaches the transmigration of spirits. In this tradition there is no need to preserve the body, as it becomes an empty vessel upon death. Birds may eat it or nature may cause it to decompose. The function of the sky burial is simply to dispose of the remains in as generous a way as possible (the origin of the practice's Tibetan name). In much of Tibet and Qinghai, the ground is too hard and rocky to dig a grave, and due to the scarcity of fuel and timber, sky burials were typically more practical than the traditional Buddhist practice of cremation, which has been limited to high lamas and some other dignitaries.

Canidae (/ˈkænɪdiː/; from Latin, canis, "dog") is a biological family of caniform carnivorans, constituting a clade. A member of this family is a canid (/ˈkeɪnɪd/), colloquially referred to as dogs. The family includes three subfamilies: the Caninae, and the extinct Borophaginae and Hesperocyoninae. The Caninae are the canines, and include domestic dogs, wolves, coyotes, raccoon dogs, foxes, jackals and other species.

Canids are found on all continents except Antarctica, having arrived independently or accompanied by human beings over extended periods of time. Canids vary in size from the 2-metre-long (6.6 ft) gray wolf to the 24-centimetre-long (9.4 in) fennec fox. The body forms of canids are similar, typically having long muzzles, upright ears, teeth adapted for cracking bones and slicing flesh, long legs, and bushy tails. They are mostly social animals, living together in family units or small groups and behaving co-operatively. Typically, only the dominant pair in a group breeds and a litter of young are reared annually in an underground den. Canids communicate by scent signals and vocalizations. One canid, the domestic dog, originated from a symbiotic relationship with Upper Paleolithic humans and is one of the most widely kept domestic animals.

Some historical Chinese characters for non-Han peoples were graphically pejorative ethnic slurs, where the racial insult derived not from the Chinese word but from the character used to write it. For instance, written Chinese first transcribed the name Yáo "the Yao people (in southwest China and Vietnam)" with the character for yáo 猺 "jackal". Most of those terms were replaced in the early 20th-century language reforms; for example, the character for the term yáo was changed, replaced this graphic pejorative meaning "jackal" with another one – a homophone meaning yáo 瑤 "precious jade".

The fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) is a small fox native to the deserts of North Africa, ranging from Western Sahara and Mauritania to the Sinai Peninsula. Its most distinctive feature is its unusually large ears, which serve to dissipate heat and listen for underground prey. The fennec is the smallest fox species. Its coat, ears, and kidney functions have adapted to the desert environment with high temperatures and little water.

The fennec fox mainly eats insects, small mammals and birds. It has a life span of up to 14 years in captivity and about 10 years in the wild. Pups are preyed upon by the Pharaoh eagle-owl; both adults and pups may fall prey to jackals and striped hyenas. Fennec families dig out burrows in the sand for habitation and protection, which can be as large as 120 m (1,300 sq ft) and adjoin the burrows of other families. Precise population figures are not known but are estimated from the frequency of sightings; these indicate that the fennec fox is currently not threatened by extinction. Knowledge of social interactions is limited to information gathered from captive animals. The fennec fox is commonly trapped for exhibition or sale in North Africa, and it is considered an exotic pet in some parts of the world.

Canis arnensis, is an extinct species of canine that was endemic to Mediterranean Europe during the Early Pleistocene. Canis arnensis has been described as a small jackal-like canid. Its anatomy and morphology relate it more to the modern golden jackal (Canis aureus) than to the larger Etruscan wolf of that time. It is probably the ancestor of modern jackals.

The characteristic of cynocephaly, or cynocephalus (/saɪnoʊˈsɛfəli/), having the head of a canid, typically that of a dog or jackal, is a widely attested mythical phenomenon existing in many different forms and contexts. The literal meaning of cynocephaly is "dog-headedness"; however, that this refers to a human body with a dog head is implied. Such cynocephalics are known in mythology and legend from many parts of the world, including ancient Egypt, Libya, Greece, India and China. Further mentions come from the medieval East and Europe. In modern popular culture cynocephalics are also encountered as characters in books, comics, and graphic novels. Cynocephaly is generally distinguished from lycanthropy (werewolfism) and dogs that can talk.

In addition, the Greeks and Romans called a species of apes cynocephalus (these apes are suspected to be baboons).