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  • Subject: The Anatomy of the Jackal
Subject: The Anatomy of the Jackal
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The Anatomy of the Jackal

1.1 What is the Jackal?

The Jackal (roughly translated from the Covenant language) is a species and member of the Covenant. The Jackals are sentient and possess superior senses of sight, smell and hearing compared to other known Covenant species.

1.2 How a Jackal Fights

The Jackals, being stealthy and quiet, prefer to use personal, handheld energy shields that attach to their wrists. Jackals mostly fight with plasma pistols and plasma rifles but do not, however, throw grenades. Because of their superior senses, Jackals are usually employed on reconnaissance and assassination missions but also serve as good soldiers. With its energy shield, one Jackal can hold its own against several marines firing projectile weapons.

1.3 The Jackal Society

Little is known about the society of the Jackal except that they consider themselves of a higher social class than the Grunt. Because of this, Jackals and Grunts usually engage in brawls and whenever they’re stuck without a leader, one will try to take control of the other.

1.4 Jackal Communication

Not much is known about how Jackals communicate but it is known that they emit high-pitched growls and other strange noises. They also use their hands a lot when showing a buddy or a group an enemy.

2.1 The Jackals Body

With an adapted body such as the Jackal has, it’s no wonder why it excels in crafty missions and battle field operations. As previously said the Jackal has extremely keen senses of sight, hearing and smell and uses these to its advantage in every situation. Some speculation as to why the Jackal has such extremely good senses include theories that the Jackal has had extremely long to evolve, or has evolved in harsh conditions in which it needed every good sense it could get.

2.2 Frills or no Frills?

One interesting thing about Jackals is that some appear to have some plumage on their heads while some do not. The frills could be a status indicator or a gender marker where the male Jackal has them whereas the females do not. There is no other reported use for these frills.
2.3 Give them the Evil Eye

Jackals have enormous eyes that enable it to see so well although no one knows how it sees through those eyes. Due to their bright nature, it can be speculated that they use these for night vision although it is not known for sure.

2.4 My!! What Big Teeth You Have Mr Jackal!!

Jackals have a big row of teeth that look like dinosaur teeth leading to the belief that the Jackal is a herbivore. The reason the teeth are quite intriguing is because the Jackal seems to have most the traits of a carnivore and not a herbivore. The teeth contradict the theory that the Jackals evolved from birds because then the Jackal would most likely be a meat eater although the birds on its home planet might not be what we call ‘normal’.

2.5 What a Big Middle Finger

One theory of how the Jackal evolved involves tree creatures. This is largely due to the Jackals ‘hands’ because it might have used them to hold on to the branches of a high tree with those three fingers. In this case the Jackal might have used its large middle finger to hold on to branches, although the lack of more fingers suggest that the Jackal isn’t well suited to handle things properly like sticks or other objects.

2.6 The Hooves

And finally, there are the hooves. The fact that Jackals have hooves similar to a horse or a deer, suggest that it is well suited for running across fields and maybe hopping across mountains. This theory completely contradicts the thought that Jackals evolved from tree creatures because then it would have no need for hooves.

Afterword

These theories are just mere speculation and should not be considered official. I am in no way affiliated to Bungie Studios except being a very devoted fan. I enjoyed writing this, and I hope you will enjoy reading it!!

Sources

The Halo: Combat Evolved manual

The Covenant Primer (http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=covenanthiera rchy&p=418 94)

Dinosaur Teeth (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/anatomy/ Teeth.shtm l)

The rest was used by my own knowledge and some things may be wrong and/or contradict others. But remember, the Jackal is an alien life-form folks!!!

Acknowledgements

Bungie Studios, for making a mind blowing game.

Rick Almeida(friend) for pointing out the eye part.

And thats it!! Fell free to comment on this writing and distribute it as freeware (or whatever you call it) as long as you say Major Silva wrote it. E-mail me at majsilva@aol.com or IM me at MajSilva.

[Edited on 5/16/2004 12:14:28 PM]

  • 05.16.2004 12:13 PM PDT
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Thank you very much for an informative, if not totally redundant and completly unnew post.

  • 05.16.2004 12:15 PM PDT
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cool, cant argue with that kinda research

  • 05.16.2004 12:17 PM PDT

Posted by: Oppiten
Thank you very much for an informative, if not totally redundant and completly unnew post.


The thing I like about Oppiten is that he seems to be in an eternal good mood.

  • 05.16.2004 12:21 PM PDT
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wow. that is coo. if i had that much time on my hands to write that, i would...sleep.

  • 05.16.2004 12:25 PM PDT
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Yeah but I did over a period of a couple of weeks. It was a major time killer for me and it gave me something to think about. Dont any of you have any theories on what I wrote? C'mon people!!

  • 05.16.2004 12:36 PM PDT
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Not really, it all seems quite sound.

  • 05.16.2004 12:39 PM PDT
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Oh please, im not THAT good of a researcher. I hope a moderator responds to this then. I wanna see what they think.

  • 05.16.2004 12:41 PM PDT
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The last man on Earth sat in a room, there came a knock at the door.

Service Record

Posted by: Major Silva
The Jackal (roughly translated from the Covenant language)


This is the only thing that is wrong, Jackel is the name that the UNSC gave these creatures.

  • 05.16.2004 12:48 PM PDT

The thing I like about Oppiten is that he seems to be in an eternal good mood.
Well, he does hat [sic] you.
Good to see you regurgitating that recent Covenant society article ;-)

  • 05.16.2004 12:50 PM PDT
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As far as the teeth go, I think they bear more resemblance to that of a carnivore's in Halo2 pictures. Check out the one with the chief and the two jackals, the teeth are hard to see but they look pretty pointed.

As for the post as a whole, there really doesn't seem to be anything new or intriguing. Sorry, but you only point out the obvious and them with mostly random guesses or "nobody knows." If you can come to any actual conclusions, I'd love to know.

  • 05.16.2004 12:52 PM PDT
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No, no, no. This is the Jackal. Not the whole society. And as for the name, from what I read they kinda did a rough translation to get they're names. Like how they did it to find out that the Covenant are called 'The Covenant'.

  • 05.16.2004 12:54 PM PDT
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Posted by: Scipio
As far as the teeth go, I think they bear more resemblance to that of a carnivore's in Halo2 pictures. Check out the one with the chief and the two jackals, the teeth are hard to see but they look pretty pointed.

As for the post as a whole, there really doesn't seem to be anything new or intriguing. Sorry, but you only point out the obvious and them with mostly random guesses or "nobody knows." If you can come to any actual conclusions, I'd love to know.


If you look at a dead Jackal in Halo:CE you'll see that the teeth are blunt and curved; just like a herbivorous dinosaur.

  • 05.16.2004 12:56 PM PDT
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The names are not translations. Not even rough ones.

  • 05.16.2004 12:58 PM PDT
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If you look at a dead Jackal in Halo:CE you'll see that the teeth are blunt and curved; just like a herbivorous dinosaur.

Yeah I know, I'm talking about Halo 2 renders. Which I imagine Bungie would at least be trying to make closer to what they have pictured in their minds for the jackal. If you wanna look at Halo: CE elites have the ability to stick their head through their bodies and stretch their mandibles. Grunts can also stick to walls by their feet.

Halo:CE contains what I'd consider fairly basic renders of the Covenant. In case you haven't noticed, the graphics aren't quite top of the line in it.

  • 05.16.2004 1:01 PM PDT