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.
[This popup map] shows where spotted hyenas live.
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.
Those stories you read in places like the National Enquirer about cats breeding with rabbits or dogs and humans breeding with gods only know what and actually producing hybrid offspring are just that -- wild stories, invented for the ignorant and gullible who want to be titillated.
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!." (Here's [a poor-quality AU
file] of their cries.) None of these sounds indicate humor as humans know
it.
Q: How fast can they run?
A: Dr. Frank thinks
their top speed is approximately 30 miles an hour.
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.
For some interesting stuff on the problems female spotted hyenas have giving birth as a result, check out [this article], based on a paper in Nature. Here's a more recent article (warning: very explicit photos).
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):
The St. Louis Zoo in Missouri has a small clan of three female spotted hyenas in its River's Edge exhibit. So does Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, in its "Edge of Africa" exhibit.
Q: All this stuff
has made me
think about getting myself a pet hyena. Do you know where I can get
one, and
what they need in captivity?
(Try not to snicker: I've
had four
emails like this already.)
I do not recommend
any wild
animal as a pet, much less a carnivore, much less a large carnivore.
More often
than not, it ends up with the animal suffering terribly and even
being killed,
and sometimes with human beings being mauled or killed as well. (And
think about
the legal repercussions if a child reaches in through the fence to
pet your
hyena and gets bitten...) For these reasons, I will not tell you how
to get a
pet hyena. Please don't ask.
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.
My grateful thanks to Dr. Laurence Frank, who read this FAQ in an earlier version and corrected several mistakes.
Mail any additional questions to [me] and I'll see if I can get an expert to answer them.