O. Gy. Dely szerk.: Vertebrata Hungarica 22. (Budapest, 1984)

Demeter, A.: Recent records of rare or non-residental large carniovores in Hungary 65-72. o.

country with little cover, mainly open pastures with few thickets of bushes scattered around on the slopes, with more woody vegetation and reeds along the streams flowing inbetwen the hills. Table 1. Measurements of the specimens Specimen head and body length tail hindfoot ear Greatest length of skull Upper toothrow Postorbital constriction Zygomatic arch Canis lupus 84.1.1. Bélapátfalva 207.2 280.0 incompl. 131.8 40.9 48.2 101.8 144.0 Canis aureus 83.66.1. 83.67.1. 1010 270 173.8 178. 5 86.0 87.9 29.1 29.1 95.2 97.7 Nyctereutes procyonoides 83.13.1. 610 200 120 40 122.3 57.7 20.6 65.3 Lynx lynx 84.19.1. 142.4 56.9 40.7 97.1 Where have these two jackals come from? It Is questionable whether there is a viable cryptic population resident in Hungary which has so far escaped the attention of hunters, as game species are very intensively managed and about fifty thousand feral dogs are shot every year. However, the knowledge of natural history of sportsmen in general, and sometimes even that of the professional game-keepers is rather poor, so even if a population did exist, a number of jackals would have been mistaken for dogs and after slicing off the nose to present the token to qualify for the bounty, the hunter would have disposed of the kill. Yet sooner or later someone would have been bound to recognize or become suspicious of the kill. It is interesting to note that SCHENCK (1950) reported seeing a jackal at the Fertő lake In 1949 and SZUNYOGHY (1954) published an appeal to hunters asking them to report to him any occurrences of jackals, as he had had news of two animals killed in Fuzesgyarmat not long before that date which were disposed of as they went unrecognized (see Fig. 1). These two unconfirmed reports are even more Interesting as SZUNYOGHY thereafter published a number of papers on the jackals of Hungary but did not mention these two records In any of them. Possibly they are so dubious that he did not even consider them worthy of note, it Is impossible to tell now. In all probability the two jackals were vagrant Individuals that dispersed north from Yugoslavia, where there has been a recent build-up in the number of jackals (ISAKOVTC 1970). BRELIH (1955) reported specimens from Slovenia and MILENKOVIC (1983 and in litt.) found jackals to be not as rare in eastern Serbia as they had previously been considered to be. There are a number of recent records from Vojvodina, south of the Yugoslav-Hungarian border (MIKES pers. comm.) Racoon-dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides [Gray]) Specimens. - HNHM reg. no. 83.13.1., o* skull and skeleton (skin In the possession of the collector), Pécel, 31 March, 1983. Coll.: F. ÁRVA. The racoon-dog was first reported in Hungary from Vásárosnamény in the north-eastern corner of the country in 1961 (SZUNYOGHY 1963); thereafter there have been repeated sightings of the species during its expansion westwards, which in general is a well-documented process in Europe (NOVAK 1975). STERBETZ (1971) reported an observation from south-east Hungary and L. SUGÁR (pers. comm.) mentioned a specimen shot in Somogy county in the south-west that the sportman responsible for the kill did not recognize and thought to be an unusual fox! Further unconfirmed reports of tracks attributed to this species are from the environs of Paks, west of the river Danube. In 1978 unconfirmed sightings were made at Gödöllő, 30 km east of Budapest (I. PUSKÁS pers. comm.). The recently obtained specimen is from Pécel, just east of Budapest, which indicates that In all probability the previous sightings were correct. In April, 1984 there was a further sighting of a racoon-dog in the area. The specimen was obtained from an extensive reed-bed where a large number of artificially raised pheasants had been released.