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Wildlife

Endangered

Ethiopian wolf

Canis simensis

An Ethiopian wolf with a red coat and white throat walking among low silvery shrubs
Image: Charles J. Sharp / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Endangered IUCN: EN · Endangered global assessment

What it is

The Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) is a slender, long legged wild dog with a reddish coat, a white throat and chest and a long narrow muzzle. It lives only in the mountains of Ethiopia and feeds mostly on rodents. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists it as Endangered.

Range

High mountain grasslands and moors of the Ethiopian highlands.

What happened

Ethiopian wolves live in family packs that share a territory, but each wolf usually hunts rodents alone. The wolves that remain live in small mountain groups cut off from each other.

When / status

Endangered now, in a handful of mountain ranges.

Human role

Rabies and distemper caught from domestic dogs, and farming and grazing on its high grasslands threaten it.

Sources