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nationalgeographic.com
The king of the jungle, you might say? Nope. We’re talking about
the hyena.
“The visceral reaction any time I tell someone I’m working with
hyenas is, Ew gross, why?”
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Hyenas have a bad rap—but they’re Africa’s most successful predator about:reader?url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/...
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An aardwolf and her pup emerge from their den at Duba Plains
Camp in Botswana.
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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Hyenas have a bad rap—but they’re Africa’s most successful predator about:reader?url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/...
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.
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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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Hyenas have a bad rap—but they’re Africa’s most successful predator about:reader?url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/...
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.)
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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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That’s not to say that hyenas will ignore available food, Drea notes:
“Any self-respecting carnivore would scavenge if given the
opportunity.”
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Hyenas have a bad rap—but they’re Africa’s most successful predator about:reader?url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/...
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.)
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Hyenas have a bad rap—but they’re Africa’s most successful predator about:reader?url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/...
And though the aardwolf and spotted hyena are listed of least
concern, “I am concerned,” Dheer says.
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Hyenas have a bad rap—but they’re Africa’s most successful predator about:reader?url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/...
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.”
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