Hyena

“ And dogs never fight hyenas; never even to defend their own lives. They may bark or howl while the hyena is some distance away, but as soon as it comes near they are silent; and when it approaches them, they simply cower and submit. Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the power to call dogs to them. . . . For five weeks I have been alone in this tent six nights in every week all night, with two children and the spartan soul of Nels the Great Dane dog; and I have seen and I have heard the process of the hyena's lure. ”

“ As we came near to the place where I had shot the diseased hyena in the morning, it occurred to me that perhaps there might be another hyena about the carcass, and feeling a bit "sore" at the tribe for stealing my wart hog, I thought I might pay off the score by getting a good specimen of a hyena for the collections. The pony boy led me to the spot, but the dead hyena was nowhere in sight. There was the blood where he had fallen, and in the dusk we could make out a trail in the sand where he had been dragged away. ”

“ The hyena flatters and adores the lion while he can roar and kill food for him; but when the lion dies the hyena instantly eats him if he can get hold of the royal carcass.
The morning after our exploit with the lion, which had first so nearly eaten Jack and afterwards been itself so nearly devoured by hyenas, we left our quarry to take care of itself, for this was the only course open to us, and went on foot towards Ngami, leaving it on the ground at the mercy of vultures or hyenas, or anything else that should smell it out and descend upon it. ”

“ It is by virtue of these that the hyena can make a meal upon bones, which would be of no use whatever to the ordinary wolf or other beast of prey. It can break almost the largest and strongest joints, and not only extract their marrow, but crush the bones themselves, and swallow them as food. Here, again, we have proof of Nature’s adaptation. It is just where these large bones are found in greatest plenty that we find the hyena. Nature suffers nothing to be wasted.
Hyenas are the wolves of Africa—that is, they are in Africa the representatives of the large wolf, which does not exist there. ”

“ Also the prospects for lions had brightened, for we were continually seeing hyenas in packs of from three to six. They lay among the stones, but galloped away at our approach. The game paid not the slightest attention to these huge, skulking brutes. One passed within twenty feet of a hartebeeste; the latter hardly glanced at him. As the hyena is lazy as well as cowardly, and almost never does his killing, we inferred a good meat supply to gather so many of them in one place. From a tributary ravine we flushed nineteen! ”

“ Had a hyena or cougar of the American forest, roaring for prey, appeared at that window, ready to burst the fragile barrier, and fasten its talons in their hearts, its presence would not have struck such sickness to the soul of our adventurers as did that human face. ”

“ No doubt, when the central parts of Africa have been thoroughly explored, several species of hyena will be added to the list of those already known.
The habits of the hyenas are not unlike those of the larger wolves. They dwell in caves, of clefts of rocks. Some of them use the burrows of other animals for their lair, which they can enlarge for themselves—as they are provided with burrowing claws.
They are not tree-climbers, as their claws are not sufficiently retractile for that. It is in their teeth their main dependence lies, and in the great strength of their jaws. ”

“ It has large pointed ears and the tail is long and bushy. Although like the Hyena, it is very fond of putrid flesh, the Hyena Dog also feeds on living prey, especially Gazelles, Antelopes, etc. To pursue and capture these, the Hyena Dogs collect in troops, which are sometimes very numerous, and under the direction of a chief, they hunt with an intelligence unsurpassed by the best pack of Hounds. When the game is taken they divide it equally, but if any of the larger Carnivorous animals approach to take a share in the feast, they all unite against the intruder. ”

“ All their demands for dress, food, trifles of any sort, must be strictly attended to. In the height of the frenzy they will sometimes carry out the idea of their hyena identity to such an extent as to attack any animal that may happen to be in the way. ”

“ They fed her, and she ate like a hyena. No caste prejudices or forbidden foods troubled her; she ate whatever came her way, Hindoo food, or Mohammedan, or Christian,—and reached for more—and finished, as hyenas finish, by breaking bones to get the marrow out. At midnight they left her, curled dogwise on a mat in the hall, to sleep; and at dawn, when they came to wake her, she was gone again—gone utterly, without a trace or sign of explanation. ”

“ They have heavier heads, broader thicker muzzles, shorter and stouter necks, and altogether a coarser and shaggier coat. One of the most characteristic marks of the hyena is the inequality in the development of its limbs. The hind-legs appear weaker and shorter than the fore ones, so that the rump is far lower than the shoulders; and the line of the back, instead of being horizontal, as in most animals, droops obliquely towards the tail.
The short thick neck and strong jaws are characteristics ”

“ All sorts of charms were considered necessary to preserve men against the wiles of a hyena, and curiously enough, the beast's own skin was held to contain a spell. A hyena's skin hung up on a gate or fence would ensure that the fruit trees within should be proof against either hail or lightning. ”

“ These hyena hordes are frightfully ugly, but rarely dangerous to man. They visit every oasis settlement in immense numbers, howling, yelping, and fighting for any bit of offal they may find. Not a particle of garbage remains. At the first sign of dawn, they disappear like rats from a burning building, and seek their caves to digest their ignoble banquets.
No human street-cleaner could ever excel their work. ”

“ Long ago, travellers used to think that hyenas had a kind of magic about them, by which they could force their prey to stand in one place till they were ready to fall upon it. It was enough for the hyena to walk round an animal three times to make it as helpless as a bird in the power of a snake. ”

“ He is a native of the southern half of Africa, where he is known among the Dutch colonists as the “tiger-wolf;” while the common hyena is by them simply called “wolf.”
A fourth species is the “brown hyena” (Hyena villosa) . The name “brown” hyena is not a good one, as brown colour is by no means a characteristic of this animal. Hyena villosa, or “hairy hyena,” is better, as the long, straight hair falling down his sides gives him a peculiar aspect, and at once distinguishes him from any of the others. ”

“ A movement of the grass, a snapping twig, the rasp of grass-blades, and a bullet came questing, another answering it.
I had but a few cartridges and I fired carefully, but presently I pushed my one remaining cartridge into the rifle—a big, six-bore, single-barrel breech-loader, for I had not had time to pick when I snatched it up.
I crouched in my covert and watched for the black to betray himself by a careless movement. Not a sound, not a whisper among the grasses. Away off over the veldt a hyena sounded his fiendish laugh and another answered, closer at hand. ”

“ He is more widely distributed than any of his congeners. Found in most parts of Africa, he is also an Asiatic animal, is common enough throughout all the southern countries of Asia, and is even found as far north as the Caucasus and the Altai. He is the only species that exists in Asia. All the others are natives of Africa, which is the true home of the hyena. ”

“ The hyena is a creature not quite so tall as a wolf, but quite as long in body. Its skin resembles that of a wolf, except that the hair is rougher, and it is also marked with large black spots; the head is firmly attached to the backbone, without any joint between, so that when it wants to look back it must turn right round. They say that it has, in the place of teeth, one continuous bone.
The Turks, like the ancients, think that the hyena has great efficacy in love charms, and though there were two hyenas at Constantinople when I was there, the owners refused to sell them to me ”

“ The rhinoceros takes a long while to turn round, and the hyena attacked him behind, biting him with his powerful jaws above the joint of the hind-leg, and continued so to do, till he had severed all the muscles, and the animal, forced from pain to lie down, was then devoured as you may say alive from behind ”

“ The species is nearly as large as a mastiff, with long limbs, broad flat head, short muzzle and large erect ears, and presents a superficial resemblance to the spotted hyena on which account it is sometimes called the hyena-dog. “Mimicry” has been suggested as an explanation of this likeness; but it is difficult to see what advantage a strong animal hunting in packs like the present species can gain by being mistaken for a hyena, as it is in every respect fully qualified to take care of itself. These wild dogs are found in nearly the whole of Africa south and east of the Sahara. ”

“ But the principal duty of the hyenas is to clear away bones, and very thoroughly they do it.
Their jaws and teeth are immensely strong. A hyena will seize the thigh-bone of an ox, and crush it up into splinters as easily as a dog will crush a chicken-bone. And when a lion or a tiger kills a victim, he always leaves a great part of the carcass lying on the ground. Some of it he has no time to eat because the jackals come and steal it while he is fast asleep after the big meal which he always takes as soon as he has killed his victim. ”

“ It never seems to occur to these creatures that they could easily gnaw their way through the wooden sides of their temporary prisons and escape, like the hyena which recently maintained itself for a week in the hold of a large cargo steamer, and was kept in a good-temper by joints of prime New Zealand mutton, until on the unloading of the vessel the hyena was captured in the congenial cavern in which it had taken up its residence. ”

“ Those beasts fought and snarled and wrestled round the deck in a way to make you glad you were up aloft, out of harm's way.
"It was a strange fight; both the hyenas and the wolves are cowards, each afraid of the other. And it was only when two wolves got at a hyena, or two hyenas got at a wolf that there was any real scrapping. ”

“ My aunt remarked that there are many well-known facts of animals being compelled by circumstances to relinquish their strongest characteristics; for instance, the hyena lives on the roots of fritillary in the unfrequented parts of Africa, but in the neighbourhood of inhabited places he feeds on carrion:—and the pied flycatcher, which lives on soft seeds in this country, is well contented in Norway with flesh dried in smoke. ”

“ That of the male resembles the same organ in the wolf and the dog. That which has been imagined to be the female organ is placed beneath the tail, and it resembles that of the female, but is imperforate, and the anus is beneath it. The female hyena has an organ similar to that which bears its name in the male. It is placed beneath the tail, and is imperforate. Beneath this is the anus, and below this again the true genital organ. The female hyena has an uterus like that of other animals of the class, but the female is rarely captured. ”

“ Next morning, just before daybreak, we heard a lion killing close to the water. After day had fully broken, I went down and found some hyenas breakfasting on the remains of a waterbuck.
Sleep's worst enemy in the Low Country was the hyena. The voice of this beast is horrible; it begins with a guttural growl and ends with a high-pitched screech. Although cowardly to a degree, hyenas would often come to within less than a hundred yards of the fire. Occasionally they might be heard on several sides at once, uttering their unspeakable yells. ”

“ As we descended the cliff we disturbed a great pack of large hyena-like beasts—hyaena spelaeus, Perry calls them—who were busy among the corpses of the cave men fallen in battle. The ugly creatures were far from the cowardly things that our own hyenas are reputed to be; they stood their ground with bared fangs as we approached them. But, as I was later to learn, so formidable are the brute-folk that there are few even of the larger carnivora that will not make way for them when they go abroad. ”

“ In Africa there are four:— The common spotted hyena, or wolf of the colonists, whose smell is so offensive that dogs leave it with disgust after it is killed; its own fellows will, however, devour it immediately. The striped or ferocious hyena, called the shard-wolf; and another, which the colonists call the bay-wolf, and which I believe to be the one known as the laughing hyena. There is another variety, which is a sort of link between the hyena and the dog, called the venatica. It hunts in packs, and the colonists term it the wild honde. ”

“ Canidae.—The jackal (C. aureus, Eur., Ind., Eth.) abounds on the Helmund and Argand-ab, and probably elsewhere. Wolves (C. Bengalensis) are formidable in the wilder tracts, and assemble in troops on the snow, destroying cattle and sometimes attacking single horsemen. The hyena (H. striata, Africa to India) is common. These do not hunt in packs, but will sometimes singly attack a bullock; they and the wolves make havoc among sheep. A favourite feat of the boldest of the young men of southern Afghanistan is to enter the hyena's den, single-handed, muffle and tie him. ”