Folklore About Hyenas

The notion that hyenas changed sex from male to female and back again and again dates back at least to ancient Greece, although Aristotle refuted it. The idea probably comes from the fact that the genitals of the two sexes look nearly identical.

In fact, Europeans often associated hyenas with sexual "perversion," especially homosexuality.

In his book Paedogogus, Clement of Alexandria complained that the hyena and the hare are "quite obsessed with sexual intercourse." Like many Europeans, he thought that male hyenas had sex with each other.

This illustration of two male hyenas in an embrace is from a fourteenth-century German bestiary in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

Medieval Europeans also believed that sometimes a lioness would mate with a hyena to produce a strange hybrid called the leucrotta. The leucrotta had a human voice and could imitate human speech to lure travelers into its clutches.

Africans have even stranger lore about hyenas. All over the continent, there are cultures that believe some witches can turn themselves into hyenas. In fact, the spotted hyena is to Africa what the black cat is in the U.S. -- the premier witch animal, uncanny and terrifying.

The Wambugwe of Tanzania believe "every witch possesses one or more hyenas which are branded (invisibly to normal eyes) with his mark, and to which he refers as his 'night cattle.' Some people say that all hyenas are owned by witches -- that there are no free or wild hyenas....At regular intervals, all witches of the land ride their hyenas to a prearranged place in the forest for a saturnalian gathering, where they boast of their evil deeds and perform obscene rites." (Robert F. Gray, in Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa.)

Supposedly the hyenas live and bear their young in the houses of witches, and the owner milks them once a day. It is dangerous to kill a hyena, for if its owner finds out he will kill the hunter with witchcraft.

Hyena devouring a corpse, from a twelfth-century book in the British Museum.

The accounts of the Wambugwe people paint a Goya-like picture of "a witch riding naked at full gallop through the night, mounted on a hyena and carrying a flaming torch which he refuels from time to time from a gourd of hyena butter slung over his shoulder."

Even when they are not afraid of witches, Africans regard hyenas with such nervous disgust that just speaking their name aloud can cause people to snicker as if at a dirty joke, according to Kruuk. The main reason they give is the same one Europeans do for despising hyenas -- that they eat human corpses.

Further Reading:

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality : Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, John Boswell. University of Chicago Press, 1981. ISBN: 0226067114

Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa, edited by J. Middleton. Out of print. ASIN: 071001838X