Black-backed jackal social structure is built on a durable pair bond. The male and female defend a shared territory, hunt together on small prey and scavenge, and both provision the young by regurgitation. Offspring from an earlier litter may delay dispersal for a year and act as helpers, guarding the den while parents forage and bringing food back.
Long-term field observation in East Africa found that pup survival rose with the number of helpers present, one of the clearer demonstrations of cooperative breeding benefit in a canid. Helpers gain in turn: they are related to the pups, and they acquire the parenting experience and the territorial position that improve their own later breeding.
The species is often written off as a scavenger following larger carnivores. It does scavenge, but it hunts a great deal too, taking rodents, hares, birds, reptiles and young antelope, and along the Namibian coast it feeds heavily on seal colonies. Taxonomy has shifted as well: it is now placed in Lupulella rather than Canis, on genetic evidence that jackals are not a single natural group.