Key Takeaways

• ‘Siyar singhi’, or jackal horn, is not a horn. Jackals do not grow horns. What is sold is typically a tuft of hair from a jackal, dog or goat, shaped and dried, or occasionally a bone deformity from the skull.
• India’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau documented 126 skins, 8 tails, over 370 jackal horns, 16 skulls and 2 live jackals seized between 2013 and 2019, a fraction of the true trade.
• The golden jackal holds Schedule I status under India’s Wildlife Protection Act since the 2022 amendment, the same tier of legal protection given to the tiger.
• The trade is driven by superstition, not scarcity: siyar singhi is marketed for luck and protection through astrologers, black magic practitioners and online sellers across religious communities.
• Much of the modern trade happens in plain sight, advertised on social media and e-commerce platforms, which makes public awareness one of the most effective tools against it.

A Skull With No Horn

Our naturalists have walked guests past jackal dens at Tipeshwar more times than we can count, and the question that comes up most after a sighting is rarely about behaviour or diet. It is about the horn. Someone has usually heard of siyar singhi, the jackal horn sold as a lucky charm in markets and online, and wants to know if it is real.

It is not. A golden jackal’s skull carries no horn, no antler, no protrusion that any biologist would recognise as one. What gets sold under that name is, in the overwhelming majority of documented cases, a ball of hair from a jackal, a stray dog or a goat, matted together by hand and passed off as something extracted from a living animal. In rarer cases it is a genuine bone deformity behind the skull’s sagittal crest, misread and mythologised. Either way, the market does not need the horn to be real. It only needs buyers to believe it might be.

The Trade Behind the Talisman

Between 2013 and 2019, a study published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa, drawing on Wildlife Crime Control Bureau seizure data, documented 126 jackal skins, 8 tails, more than 370 siyar singhi talismans, 16 skulls and 2 live jackals recovered across India. Researchers involved in the study describe the true scale as almost certainly larger, since jackals are common, unglamorous and rarely prioritised by enforcement compared with tigers or elephants. A widespread species can still be a poached species, and jackals are proof of that.

The demand runs through astrologers, ritual goods traders and black magic practitioners, and it crosses religious lines rather than sitting inside any one tradition. What has changed the trade’s scale in the last decade is the internet. Siyar singhi is openly marketed on YouTube, sold through listings on e-commerce platforms, and often turns up in the same raids that catch hatha jodi, the dried organ of a monitor lizard traded for similar superstitious reasons. Officials at the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau have noted that many sellers know the product is fabricated and prosecute cases partly under cheating statutes for that reason, in addition to wildlife law.

Myth Versus Reality

Stripped of the mystique, the claims made for siyar singhi do not hold up.

Why This Matters at Tipeshwar

Jackals at Tipeshwar are not the sanctuary’s 10 overlooked species at Tipeshwar, and that is precisely the problem the wider trade exploits. Poaching pressure tends to follow attention, and a species that rarely gets its own spotlight is a species enforcement agencies are more likely to underestimate. Tipeshwar’s jackal pairs share buffer-zone edges with farmland, exactly the kind of fringe habitat where snares and opportunistic poaching are hardest to police.

A private safari here is not incidental to that protection

Every naturalist-led jeep at Tipai spends part of a drive on identification and ecology, precisely because a guest who can recognise a jackal, and knows there is no such thing as a real jackal horn, is a guest less likely to be fooled by a roadside stall on the way home. It is a small, unglamorous piece of conservation, delivered quietly rather than marketed loudly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is siyar singhi actually extracted from a jackal’s horn?
No. Jackals have no horns. What is sold as siyar singhi is typically a shaped tuft of hair from a jackal, dog or goat, and occasionally a genuine skull deformity, but never an actual horn.

Is it illegal to buy or sell siyar singhi in India?
Yes. Golden jackals are a Schedule I species under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, and trading in their parts, real or fabricated and marketed as such, is a criminal offence. Sellers are sometimes also charged under cheating statutes since the product itself is fake.

How many jackals have been poached for this trade?
Exact numbers are unknown because jackal poaching is under-monitored. Documented Wildlife Crime Control Bureau seizures between 2013 and 2019 alone included 126 skins, 370-plus jackal horns, 16 skulls and 2 live jackals, which researchers believe understates the real scale.

Why are jackals poached if the horn itself isn’t real?
The finished talisman does not need a real horn, but producing one still typically requires killing a jackal for its skull or coat, or a dog or goat killed or sourced for the hair used to fabricate the piece.

What should I do if I see jackal parts or siyar singhi for sale?
Avoid purchasing it and report the seller to the nearest forest department office or India’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau. Buying it, even out of curiosity, sustains the market.