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nationalgeographic.com

Hyenas have a bad rap—but they’re

Africa’s most successful predator
PUBLISHED June 14, 2019
14-18 minutes

The most successful hunter in all of Africa is intelligent and loving,

forming intricate social bonds that rival those of primates. Cubs of
the alpha female inherit the rank immediately below hers, similar to
a monarchy.

The king of the jungle, you might say? Nope. We’re talking about
the hyena.

Long misunderstood as dim-witted, gluttonous scavengers with a

demonic laugh, the hyena has a “serious PR crisis on its paws,”
says Arjun Dheer, a Ph.D. student at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo
and Wildlife Research in Germany, who studies spotted hyenas in
Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater.

“The visceral reaction any time I tell someone I’m working with
hyenas is, Ew gross, why?”

That’s because centuries of literature and traditional folklore—often

featuring stories of witchcraft, grave-digging, and sexual
deviance—have cemented a “deep-rooted disgust for the hyena in
the human psyche,” he says.

Aristotle described the hyena as “exceedingly fond of putrefied

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flesh.” Hemingway labeled the animal a “hermaphroditic self-eating

devourer of the dead.” And Roosevelt called it a “singular mixture of
abject cowardice and the utmost ferocity,” according to a 1995
study on the hyena’s status throughout history. Pliny the Elder, an
ancient Roman author, wrote that hyenas can magically freeze
other animals in place.

Picture of an Aardwolf and her pup emerging from a den

View Images

An aardwolf and her pup emerge from their den at Duba Plains
Camp in Botswana.

Photograph by Jason Edwards, Nat Geo Image Collection

With such an unsavory history, it’s no surprise pop culture

depictions of hyenas have followed suit. The all-new movie, The
Lion King, which Disney releases July 19, again portrays a trio of
spotted hyenas as evil sidekicks of the villain Scar. (The Walt
Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic
Partners.)

Though spotted hyenas of East and southern Africa are the most
commonly maligned, the four species are often lumped together as
one. The brown hyena, the rarest species, is native to southern
Africa; aardwolves are monogamous insect-eaters found in East
and southern Africa; and striped hyenas, the smallest and least-
studied species, live in fragmented populations across Asia and
northern Africa.

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Mostly, it’s fear and lack of understanding of these hyenas, coupled

with their unusual appearance and scavenging tendencies, that
have spawned so many negative stereotypes, says Dheer.

But, he says, it’s time to set the record straight.

Myth: Hyenas are stupid.

The Lion King’s hyena trio, Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed, lurk in the
shadows of the elephant graveyard. Ed is dim-witted, with
unfocused eyes and a floppy tongue, and he gnaws on his own
flesh. Under Scar’s leadership, the hyenas contribute to the
collapse of the entire Pride Rock ecosystem.

In reality, these apex predators are critical to controlling prey

populations and preventing the spread of disease, particularly by
eating every last bit of an animal, Dheer says.

View Images

Spotted hyenas fight with a lioness in Masai Mara National Reserve

in Kenya.

Photograph by Anup Shah, Nature Picture Library

Spotted and brown hyenas live in tight-knit clans that are led by an
alpha—often a female—and include lower-ranking females, males,
and young. Clan size depends mostly on prey availability, ranging
from 10 members in some desert-dwelling clans to around 120
animals at the resource-rich Ngorongoro and Kenya’s Masai Mara

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National Reserve, Dheer says.

Such large and complicated groups make spotted hyenas “the most
socially complex carnivores in the world,” Dheer adds. (Watch wild
dogs and hyenas face off after a kill.)

“You couldn’t maintain all these social bonds if you weren’t

intelligent,” adds Ingrid Wiesel, founder of the Brown Hyena
Research Project, who studies brown hyenas in coastal Namibia.

Hyena Clan Resists A Lion Pride From Taking Their Food

For instance, after she captured and radio-collared a brown hyena

at her study site, it took her another six years to catch another.

“They outsmart you every time,” she says.

Myth: Hyenas laugh.

Vocalizations keep hyena societies intact: Their classic whoop

serves to recruit more hyenas during a fight with lions, advertise a
male’s fitness, or simply communicate with other hyenas about
location. Then there’s the oft-misunderstood laugh, or giggle, which
is unique to the spotted hyena.

For centuries, authors have described this sound as deceitful or

mischievous. “I will laugh like a hyena, and that when thou art
inclined to sleep,” Shakespeare writes in As You Like It.

In truth, it’s not a happy noise: A lower-ranking animal makes this

laughing-like sound when it’s upset or stressed, Dheer says.

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View Images

Spotted hyenas feed on the remains of a cow in Kenya. The

animals are skilled predators and can hunt independently or in
groups.

Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James, Nat Geo Image Collection

Myth: Hyenas are only scavengers.

As the story line goes, “the lion is the king, and the hyena is a
skulking, nasty, dirty thing because it’s a scavenger,” says Christine
Drea, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University who has
studied spotted hyenas.

This myth refuses to die, she says, “even with the evidence to the
contrary staring everyone in the face.”

The truth? Hyenas are excellent hunters whose spoils are more
likely to be stolen by lions than the other way around. In the
Serengeti in the 1970s, zoologist Hans Kruuk found that when
spotted hyenas and lion share a carcass, hyenas were responsible
for the kill 53 percent of the time. (See 14 incredible photos of
African predators in action.)

Spotted hyenas can take down buffalo and baby elephants, hunting
alone or in groups—a “flexibility that gives them an advantage over
their competitors,” Dheer says.

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View Images

A brown hyena feeds on a carcass at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary

in Botswana.

Photograph by Vincent Grafhorst, Minden Pictures/Nat Geo Image Collection

That’s not to say that hyenas will ignore available food, Drea notes:
“Any self-respecting carnivore would scavenge if given the
opportunity.”

And they’re exceptional at it. Sledgehammer-like jaws shatter

bones, while highly acidic stomachs break down the shards.

Myth: Hyenas are weak.

In the meager deserts of southern Namibia, brown hyenas maintain

home ranges of up to 1,150 square miles. An animal will walk an
average of 15 miles a night in search of a meal, often baby seals,
according to Wiesel.

Such endurance is due in part to their streamlined body shape.

Stubby hind legs increase energy efficiency, allowing the animals to
lope easily across the ground. Hyena also have big, strong lungs
and hearts as well as wide nostrils that facilitate oxygen exchange.

Myth: Hyenas stink.

The Kaguru people of Tanzania believe hyenas dig up the graves of

the dead, which, according to their beliefs, is why they smell bad. In

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reality, hyenas actually don’t have much of a smell, say Dheer and
Wiesel.

“You want to talk about a stinky animal,” Dheer says with a laugh,
“the African wild dog rolls in its own poop.” (See more amazing
photos of African wildlife.)

Hyenas do produce a substance from their anal gland that

scientists have nicknamed “hyena butter”—it’s a paste used to mark
their territories and smells like mulch, Dheer says.

View Images

An 11-week-old spotted hyena cub sits on its mother in Masai Mara

National Reserve. Due to hyenas' ability to crush and digest bones,
their milk is very high in calcium.

Photograph by Suzi Eszterhas, Minden Pictures/Nat Geo Image Collection

Myth: Hyenas are hermaphrodites.

Female hyenas are stellar mothers, investing more time in their

cubs than most carnivores. Not only do they nurse cubs on
extremely calcium-rich milk for two years, moms wrestle and play
with their offspring for hours at a time—another sophisticated,
primate-like behavior. (See more pictures of animal moms and
babies.)

However, spotted hyena females are often mistaken for males.

They have genitals that resemble males’. When two hyenas—male

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or female—greet, the higher-ranking animal will sniff the lower-

ranking animal’s genitals to reinforce bonds and lower stress levels.
Females also urinate, mate, and give birth through this
pseudopenis.
It’s this physical trait that has particularly harmed the hyena’s public
persona. In Physiologus, a Christian text from the second century
A.D., the hyena is said to alternate between male and female, and
thus “is unclean because it has two natures,” according to the 1995
study.

Truth: Hyenas are vulnerable to extinction.

Because of habitat loss and widespread hunting, striped and brown

hyenas are classified as near-threatened by the International Union
for Conservation of Nature, the body that sets the conservation
status of species.

And though the aardwolf and spotted hyena are listed of least
concern, “I am concerned,” Dheer says.

View Images

A striped hyena walks through Botswana's Okavango Delta. The

species is classified as near-threatened.

Photograph by Beverly Joubert, Nat Geo Image Collection

Spotted hyenas are locally extinct throughout much of South Africa,

as well as West and central Africa. Persecuted by farmers and
poachers, their numbers seem to be declining outside of protected

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areas, according to Dheer.

“I’m not super optimistic about their future, especially considering

their negative public perception,” he says.

That’s why he and his colleagues are working hard to boost hyenas’
profile, especially on social media.

“If non-scientists could speak for these animals,” says Wiesel, “that
would do a lot more for the public to understand they’re not so bad.”

Africa’s lion population has dropped from 200,000 to 20,000 in the

past century. Join Disney in supporting the Wildlife Conservation
Network’s Lion Recovery Fund in a global campaign to help double
the population by 2050.

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