Where did jackals get their bad reputation? It stems back to Ancient Egypt. [VID: Where did jackals get their bad reputation? It stems back to Ancient Egypt. Anubis, god of the dead, was represented as a jackal, or a man with the head of a jackal. It was believed that the evening yips and yowls of jackals were the haunting songs of the dead. These negative images still persist in modern cultures. Jackals are believed to be cold-hearted and calculating killers, the vicious thugs of the animal wor