A jackal has an animal body. It has no hands. It is a carnivore.

In Asiatic folktale, jackal provides for the lion; he scares up game, which the lion kills and eats, and receives what is left as reward. In stories from northern India he is sometimes termed "minister to the king," i.e. to the lion. From the legend that he does not kill his own food has arisen the legend of his cowardice. Jackal's heart must never be eaten, for instance, in the belief of peoples indigenous to the regions where the jackal abounds. ... In Hausa Negro folktale Jackal plays the role of sagacious judge and is called "O Learned One of the Forest." The Bushmen say that Jackal goes around behaving the way he does "because he is Jackal".

Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore