Animals I Love

Q: What's the difference between a spotted hyena and any other hyena?

A: There are four species of hyenas: the spotted, striped and brown hyenas and the aardwolf. The aardwolf eats only termites. The striped and brown hyenas scavenge more than the spotted hyena, and look different as well.

Q: They're related to dogs, right?

A: Wrong. Hyenas are a family of their own, the Hyaenidae. They're more closely related to cats than dogs, but their closest relatives are the Herpestidae -- mongooses, meerkats and such.

Q: But what on earth do they have in common with cats?

A: Skeletal details it would take a specialist to explain. DNA studies also prove the relationship. When hyenas lick the space between their hind legs, they lift one or both hind legs into the air much like cats -- "playing the cello," as one cat-lover has called it. One observer claims the female purrs while suckling her cubs.

Q: Okay, so could a hyena cross with either a cat or a dog and produce offspring?

A: No way! In order to produce offspring, even sterile ones, the parents have to be sufficiently closely related to at least be in the same family of animals. Dogs are in one family, the Canidae. Cats are in another, the Felidae. And as I've just said above, hyenas are in their own family. They couldn't possibly produce offspring with any canid or felid, not even with artificial fertilization in a laboratory.

Q: How hard can a hyena bite, really?

A: Dr. Frank advises me a lot of figures get tossed around, but they usually involve one attempt to measure one individual animal's strength on one occasion. Such figures aren't much use. But a hyena can support its own weight by its jaws -- it can actually hang by its jaws from a larger animal. Hyenas -- Nature's Gangsters shows dramatic proof of this when a hyena hangs onto a full-grown topi antelope by its jaws alone while the topi leaps, lunges and spins in a futile effort to throw off its captor.
However, Wendy Binder of UCLA did do a study on Dr. Frank's hyenas. According to Dr. Frank:
"Unfortunately, Wendy's thesis presents her data in terms of force (Newtons) rather than pressure (psi). She measured forces as high as 4500 Newtons, but a quick search of the internet did not show me an easy way to convert this to a pressure measure. I assume that would involve dividing the force measure over a surface area; the unit conversation program that I found said that 4500 Newtons is equal to 1011 pound force. Perhaps if this were divided by the surface area of the tooth doing the biting??? I would guess that is less than 1/4 sq. in., so the force might be around 4000 psi???"
That should give you an idea how uncertain such measurements are, even in a laboratory setting. But suffice it to say you wouldn't want to get bitten by a spotted hyena.;-)
These figures may not apply to striped and brown hyenas, and definitely don't apply to aardwolves, whose jaws and teeth are so feeble that they can't even chew meat.

Q: Is it true that they're just scavengers?

A: No. Spotted hyenas kill their own prey more often than they scavenge. Favorite prey include wildebeests and zebras. But most carnivores, hyenas included, will scavenge when they get a chance.

Q: I've heard hyenas follow lions around and live off their kills.

A: It's more often the other way around. Lions often take over hyenas' kills; the males will walk right into a clan of feeding hyenas and take the carcass from them. Hyenas will steal kills from lionesses if no male lions are around and they badly outnumber the lionesses.

Q: They must not get along very well together. Do they?

A: "If animals can hate, this is a blood feud of hatred," according to Eternal Enemies. Male lions will chase and kill hyenas with no provocation. Hyenas will chase a lioness even after she abandons her kill to them. Hyenas kill and eat sick, injured or dead lions.

Q: Do hyenas have any predators, or natural enemies other than lions and humans?

A: No predators actually eat hyenas. It's not terribly efficient or helpful to one's survival to hunt other large predators. However, hyenas are vulnerable to disease organisms and parasites like any other wild animal, and this could be seen as a kind of predation.
African wild dogs seem to detest spotted hyenas almost as much as lions do. If they catch one alone, especially near their dens or their kills, they'll mob and harass it, to the point of blood being drawn.

Q: Do they really laugh?

A: When excited, especially when being attacked by another hyena, a spotted hyena will make a giggling noise. Spotted hyenas also make other noises, including a long, manic whoop best transcribed as "oooooh-WHUP!." None of these sounds indicate humor as humans know it.

Q: Will hyenas eat each other?

A: Adult hyenas of the same clan don't normally kill and eat each other. Hans Kruuk records an incident in which hyenas ate the carcass of another hyena of a different clan with whom they had fought earlier.

Q: Is it true that hyenas can change sexes?

A: No mammal can do that. What is true is that the female hyena's genitals look just like the male's: she has a huge clitoris she can erect at will and even has a sack of fibrous tissue that looks like testicles.

Q: My God, why?

A: No one knows for sure. We know what it's used for: the hyena greeting ceremony. Each hyena sniffs and licks the other's genitals and erects its own penis or clitoris. It's like dogs sniffing each other's rumps. Erection is voluntary, like raising your arm.

Q: You said the females are dominant on another page. Don't the males resent this?

A: Sometimes several males will "bait" a single female, standing around her, barking at and even nipping her. She lies down defensively and takes it, only biting back when they get close. Sometimes this baiting is serious: Kruuk saw one female with blood on her legs afterward. Other times the baiting will stop and the female will get up and walk away as if nothing had happened. If her female relatives hear the racket, they may stop the baiting. Whether this is the male equivalent of resistance to sexism, only hyenas know. Dr. Laurence Frank states that this happens when a female comes into heat and several males are following her. Dr. Mills states that other females may join in.

Q: It sounds as if hyenas don't get along very well, even if they don't eat each other.

A: Kruuk thought adult hyena society remarkably peaceful within the clan, but Dr. Frank states that female hyenas behave very aggressively toward each other. Hyenas from different clans war with each other in pitched mass battles. These fights seldom cause injuries, but occasionally one or even several hyenas are killed.

Q: Whoah! You said "adult hyena society." Surely the cubs don't fight?

A: Cubs fight viciously, often quite literally from the moment they're born. BBC's Carnivore! series has gruesome footage illustrating this. A hyena has given birth to three cubs, and two are already fighting savagely -- until they notice the third, still being licked dry, and attack it. As many as 25 percent of all cubs may die from such fights before adulthood. The worst fighting is between two sisters in the same litter. As soon as she can, the stronger female will kill the weaker. Unlike most carnivores, hyenas are born with their eyes open and teeth functional.

Q: Doesn't the mother stop this?

A: Occasionally she tries, but it's a losing battle. Also, cubs dig a network of smaller tunnels from the birthing den, tunnels into which the adults don't fit, and will kill each other there. Or, the weaker cub may be so intimidated that it doesn't dare come out to nurse and so starves to death.

Q: How long does she raise them?

A: The gestation period is 110 days, but the length of time she nurses them varies a lot depending on how dominant she is. The cubs of high-ranking mothers get to eat from the kills at a much younger age than those of low-ranking mothers, so are weaned earlier -- perhaps as early as at 8 months. The cubs of a low-ranking mother may have to nurse up to a year and a half.
Q: Do they mate for life, like wolves?

A: No. Mating is a one-time thing. The females apparently will only mate with males who were not born in the clan, sometimes even with nomadic males not attached to any clan. Males are usually transients anyway, wandering from their birth clans and often moving from clan to clan.

Q: Will hyenas eat people?

A: Dead people, yes, just as they would any other dead animal. Hyenas usually run from humans, which is why scientists studying them stay in cars and watch them through binoculars or video cameras. But in some areas, hyenas occasionally bite or even eat people, especially if they find them sleeping outside at night, according to Dr. Frank.
Q: Are there any zoos where I can go see hyenas?

A: Most zoos don't care to display hyenas, because there still isn't much public demand. People still think of hyenas as cowardly, ugly scavengers. If more people get the facts, and zoos get more requests, that may change. I'll try to keep a list of zoos that do have them (in halfway decent conditions that allow them to live a clan life):

Q: Do hyenas have any redeeming features at all?

A: The notion that Nature must justify itself to humanity is a holdover from creationism, I think. By contrasting the peculiar social behavior of hyenas with other social animals, including primates, we may learn more about ourselves and why we became social, and the evolutionary reasons for male dominance and female dominance. They also keep their prey animals' numbers under control like any other carnivore, and help rid the plains of carcasses. Finally, hyenas are interesting and have a basic right to exist, just like any other living thing.