This is purely a distraction diary, a Warren and Kennedy Free Zone if you will. Relax, enjoy some odd carnivore action and then head back to the battle!
On the way back to camp we stopped to photograph the sun setting behind an impressive baobab tree. It was one of the few times I was able to walk around the African wilderness outside of the relatively safe confines of the Range Rover. I moved down the road and behind a bush to mark some territory and loping round the bend ahead of me I see a large sloping dog-like creature.
We both freeze and I get a photo. It soon turns and disappears back around the bend. I oh-so-casually move back to our small group of humans and migrate toward the middle of the herd. "There's a hyena over there" I tell the guide as I consider scent marking the tire of the Range Rover.
The Spotted Hyena is definitely not one of the marquee critters one thinks about when going on a photo-safari to Africa, but I found them fascinating for their grungy otherness. I have been posting hyena cub photos in the pootie diaries calling them non-pooties-non-woozles. I recently started doing a little online research into their natural history and while I knew they were different I was in for some real surprises. The following is a look at these bizarre creatures.
EVOLUTION
Contrary to appearances hyenas are actually more closely related to cats than dogs. They belong to the suborder Feliformia or cat-like carnivores. The first hyena was a small civet-like creature that appeared about 26 million years ago. Their closest living relatives are the slinky Mongoose, the social TV stars the Meerkats and the unique Fossa evolved in the extreme isolation of Madagascar.
Mongoose, Hawaii (alien species)
Meerkat, San Diego Zoo
By 15 million years ago Eurasia was home to several species of hyenas including a model built for speed not unlike the modern cheetah. These hyenids were generally more lithe and dog-like than the stout bone-crushers we know today. At the same time the Canids, the true dogs, were evolving in the Americas in isolation from Eurasia. The bone-crushing scavenger niche was being filled in Eurasia by another family of animals entirely, the percrocutoids.
Around seven million years ago the Canids that had been developing in the Americas crossed the new Bering land bridge and began competing with and displacing the dog-like hyenas. The dogs were just better at being dogs. The hyenids became bone crushing scavengers and the percrocutoids went extinct. It was a case of musical environmental niches.
The Pleistocene was the hey-day of the hyenas with sloppy saber-tooth cats leaving lots of mega-fauna scraps for nine species of hyenid scavengers including Pachycrocuta, a lioness-sized mega-hyena. As the saber-tooth cats were replaced by more efficient felines some hyenas changed again, back to hunting more of their own food, which leads us to the subject of this diary, the Spotted (or Laughing) Hyena. The Spotted Hyena is the largest, most social and most aggressive of the four extant species of Hyaenidae family. The others being the Brown Hyena, the Striped Hyena (both omnivorous but primarily scavengers) and the termite-eating Aardwolf.
Spotted Hyena
BASICS
The Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta) lives throughout sub-Saharan Africa except for the Congo Basin. They weigh from 100 to 155 pounds with the reverse sexual dimorphism of the other hyena species and most other carnivores; the females are larger than the males (and much more macho as we will see).
They are known for the hysterical laughing sounds they make when excited or threatened, hence the name Laughing Hyena. They are highly social and highly vocal, with many calls including whoops, grunts groans and growls in addition to the famous laugh.
One night at dinner at a field camp in Botswana I heard a clan's unearthly howling. It was not laughter but a mournful rising wail. It was eerie and unlike anything I have ever heard. Some African tribes believe they can call humans by name, that they are the tools of witches or demons. To say they have a negative reputation would be a gross understatement.
At one camp they tell stories of epic battles to keep the food supply safe from raiding hyenas. They would chew through several inch thick log walls and even through sheet metal reinforcement of the store room walls. It took thick steel plate to final keep them out.
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Spotted Hyenas live in matriarchal clans of up to 80 animals dominated by an alpha female. She is assisted by her sisters and daughters and control of the clan tends to be inherited. Her daughters are treated as princesses by the clan and one will probably end up as alpha female. The males are truly second class citizens with status generally lower than the lowest ranking female. Females stay with their birth clan while males usually depart. The females will only mate with males from outside the clan to avoid inbreeding.
Studies have shown that they have a very high level of social intelligence, more in line with Old World Monkeys like Baboons than other social carnivores. They intimately know all the other other members of their clan and form ever-shifting relationships based on intricate calculations of social status. There is a lot of political maneuvering going on in a hyena clan and they have the brain development to show for it. Dumb beasts they are not.
REPRODUCTION
Make the children leave the room and gird your loins, things are about to get weird. Possibly as the result of selection for extreme aggression in the violent political world of the matriarchal clan Spotted Hyena females are the most "masculinized in the animal kingdom".
The female spotted hyena's reproductive system appears at first glance to be fully male, with an enlarged clitoris that has become a "psuedo-penis" and vulva that have grown closed and formed into lumpy imitation testicles. This explains why hyenas were thought to be hermaphrodites by the Ancient Greeks (and even the talented but biologically-challenged Ernest Hemingway). The female urinates, mates and gives birth through this fully functional and erectile phallus.
Sorry, no phallus photos
Yes, they essentially give birth though their penis. Twins usually. Yeah, I know. And it apparently is exactly as problematic as it sounds. 10% of first time mothers die in the process. The organ ruptures during the first birth making subsequent births somewhat less difficult. Yeah, I know. The design of this system is very poor with a birth canal longer than the umbilical cord so the placenta has to break free or the cord has to break, and there is an acute angle turn thrown in for good measure. There is a drawing of this mess HERE Intelligent design my ass.
From my somewhat shallow web-based research it seems this system is a result of the females being awash in male hormones although a study into the mechanism failed to show a relation between hormones and genital design during embryo development. It seems to be a bit of mystery, but like all things in nature it must provide some advantage. The idea is that highly aggressive and dominant females in hyena society raise more offspring so it is worth having this ridiculous plumbing as a trade off for being big and mean.
The forward position of their vaginal opening gives the female complete control over which male get to mate with her. Intercourse is a difficult process and requires full female cooperation. There is no rape in the hyena world. The larger size, more aggressive attitude, and dominant social position of the females apparently makes courtship a real chore for the males, redefining the term "grovel".
Unlike canines not only the dominant female has cubs but the subordinates tend to move away from her when they give birth. They usually give birth to two cubs per litter. The little gremlins are born ready to go, sighted and with teeth in place. If they are the same sex they immediately go into competition and well...
Spotted hyenas are one of the few animals in which the young perform siblicide. Beginning only hours after birth, siblings of the same sex (usually they are both female) battle for dominance, biting each other and grabbing each other by the neck and shaking each other like two fighting adults. The one that wins (firstborn has an advantage) keeps the other from nursing until it weakens and dies. Because fighting occurs in the cubs' narrow tunnels, mothers are powerless to intervene. This sibling rivalry kills an estimated 25% of all hyenas in their first month. The surviving male grows faster and is likelier to achieve reproductive dominance; the surviving female eliminates a rival for dominance in her natal clan. There is no reproductive competition between siblings of opposite sex and consequently no killing. LINK
There is evidence that hyena females use this nasty habit to modify the gender balance of the clan to their liking, separating the cubs if they want more of that gender to survive, leaving them together if not.
Hyenas do not regurgitate food for the cubs like dogs so hyena cubs tend to nurse for much longer than wolf puppies, up to and sometimes over eight months. Also hyenas do not nurse each others cubs, even close relations. The clan does cooperate in raising the young however. The hyena cubs I was able to photograph were being looked after by a sub adult while the mother and the rest of the clan were away.
HUNTING and Other Factoids
I think it is common knowledge to the Animal Planet generation that Spotted Hyenas actually hunt most of their food and that they are not only scavengers as previously thought. They hunt primarily by persistent pursuit of their prey, running them to exhaustion much like the African Wild Dog.
African Wild Dog
While they probably weren't actively hunting, one day we saw two hyenas running along at a steady pace. We wanted to get some photos so the guide went into chase mode in the Range Rover. We were going as fast as we could on the winding dirt roads for several miles but the pair out paced us and disappeared into the bush. Their speed and endurance was impressive.
Hyena on the move
They usually hunt at night in small groups and they can bring down medium sized prey such as zebra, gazelles, warthogs and impala and sometimes even larger beasts. They have jaws that can crush the femur of a giraffe and their stomach juices easily dissolve bone and hoof. Their turds often turn white from the abundance of crushed bone in their diet. Of course they are not above stealing a meal. They have been observed following the smaller and more fragile Cheetah and then stealing their prey while they are exhausted immediately following a kill.
Cheetah
While leopards are heavier and more substantial than cheetahs, hyenas are also capable of driving them off their kill and stealing their dinner. All of these predators will kill each others cubs given the opportunity.
Leopard
But the major competition for territory and prey is with their true nemesis, the lion. While predators generally ignore other species' territorial boundaries hyenas and lions commonly scent mark and defend territory from each other. They have been observed in full scale warfare over extended periods of time with many casualties on both sides. Contrary to popular belief lions steal more prey from hyenas than the reverse.
Leo
I hope you have enjoyed this diary about one of Africa's least loved creatures. The photos are all mine, the words probably border on plagiarism, and the research was shallow to make up for being slipshod. If you find something glaringly wrong please let me know.
Aloha!
More photos of waves and critters and stuff at MY PHOTO.NET SITE