Brown Hyena

[Peter Betts]

You cant really call Namibia a Hostile (environment) Country..The Brownies love the desert areas and thrive there as they do in Kgalagadi where they are by far the most common Predator

[Richprins]

CUSTOS 1978

[Richprins]

DSCF0075.JPG (151.2 KiB) Viewed 639 times

[Peter Betts]

Gus first got his Doctorate in Brown Hyenas and then Spotties ..I met him and his family in the Good ol Days at Nossob where the Mills and Betts families were the only residents in camp for weeks at a time. He then moved to Kruger and was Predator Biologist/Scientist ..I flew with him out of Skukuza Airport tracking his Wild Dog Packs in the South Bulge of Kruger ..I learnt so much ..Listening to the pings from the aerial mounted on the wing of the very slow flying Patanavia Kruger Research aircraft as it picked up signal of the collared alpha female of each one of the 5 major packs down below ..we found them all in less than 3 hours ...Skukuza Pack, Afsaal Pack, P Kop Pack, Berg en Dal Pack and one other ..miss those days

[Klipspringer]

https://tswalu.com/highly-adaptive-brown-hyena/

CONSERVATION | FEB 2021
HIGHLY ADAPTIVE BROWN HYENA
DR DUNCAN MACFADYEN



The hierarchy of the brown hyena is quite complex, with aggressive rituals dominating relationships. Clans are incredibly territorial, and may cover an area of up to 500 square kilometres. The clan usually consists of a mated pair and their offspring, but may include several mature males and females. The clan cooperatively defends a territory, but does not forage together. This species is mainly crepuscular and nocturnal, lying up during the day in cover or in deserted burrows. They can travel distances of up to 35 kilometres in a single night, searching and hunting for food. On Tswalu, nomadic males and solitary females that are not associated with a clan are often encountered. These are often animals that have dispersed from their natal clan and are waiting for the opportunity to immigrate into another clan (in the case of males). Females are looking for a vacant area in which they can settle and establish a new clan.


IMAGE BY THILO BECK

The brown hyena is predominantly a scavenger, with the bulk of its diet consisting of carcasses killed by other larger predators, like lion, leopard and cheetah. Strong jaws are an effective scavenging tool and have the ability to grind through the toughest bones. As a scavenger, the brown hyena has an important role removing the remains of dead animals from the veld, as these serve as breeding grounds for many diseases and parasites if left to decay. They are poor hunters with a very small proportion of their diet comprising of live prey, for example springhares, springbok lambs and ground birds. They are opportunists, and supplement their diet with rodents, insects, ostrich eggs and even desert melons. Eating tsama and gemsbok melons makes them effective in dispersing the seeds of these fruits at defecation sites.


IMAGE 1 SUPPLIED BY TSWALU FOUNDATION; IMAGE 2 BY BARRY PEISER

Brown hyenas are non-seasonal breeders and have a gestation period of approximately 90 days. Females give birth to one to four young, which suckle for more than a year and live in a den for up to 18 months. Hyenas learn to battle for food from birth. The female only has two nipples, so from the outset cubs must compete for food. In litters of more than two, the weaker cubs struggle to survive and often die of starvation. Mother’s milk is supplemented with meat from three months of age. At birth they resemble their parents in colour and reach full size by 30 months. Cubs are generally more wary and escape to the safety of their dens when they feel threatened. Around 60 percent of hyena cubs die before reaching adulthood. This can be from starvation or because territorial males are regularly killed by lions.


IMAGE BY ERWIN NIEMAND

Adults mark their territory by ‘pasting’ secretions from their anal gland onto grass stalks. The white blob left behind contains crucial information about each hyena, revealing its identity and when it last passed by.

[Lisbeth]

Setting the record straight on the much maligned hyena
By Ed Stoddard• 7 March 2021



Cowardly, scavengers, maniacal harbingers of witchcraft – the hyena image in the human mind is hardly flattering. Thanks to the likes of Disney, ancient prejudices live on in the 21st century. A new book aims to set the record straight.

In his new book Humans and Hyenas: Monster or Misunderstood, Keith Somerville aims to repair the predator’s undeserved reputation in human eyes. Somerville’s title might be slightly misleading: he clearly regards the monster of the human imagination as misunderstood. Through an extensive overview of scientific, historical and popular literature, Somerville uncovers the roots of the misconceptions around the three species of hyena – the striped, spotted and brown – and makes a compelling case for the cause of their conservation.

“No other animal is quite so bound up in people’s minds with death as the hyena, and across practically all of its range in Africa, West Asia and South Asia it features in mythology and folktales, with strong associations with evil, cowardice and witchcraft,” Somerville writes.

“European accounts of hyenas, secondhand and garbled, follow many of the same patterns and incorporate the myths about hermaphroditism derived from the unusual external form of the female genital organs of spotted hyenas. In folktales and myths, there is a thread of genuine fear of an animal that killed stock, even killed and ate people, and which digs up graves and eats corpses. This provides a starting point for the imagery of the hyena, but with inaccuracies, superstition and outright falsehoods woven into the narratives. Over millennia this has created an image of hyenas that is common globally and taken up with gusto in films and the media, and even in wildlife documentaries.”

Associations of hyenas with witchcraft and the occult are a common theme. In North Africa, Somerville notes that the spotted hyena historically “… was persecuted where it was blamed by pastoral and farming communities for attacks on stock (especially goats, sheep and poultry), supposed threats posed to children and the aura of the occult surrounding it because of its digging up and consumption of human corpses from graveyards.”

Similar views obtain elsewhere.

“An aspect of southern African supernatural/occult beliefs is the ape-like creature the tokoloshe or tokolotši, found in Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tsonga and other belief systems. The belief is that it is a witch that turns itself into a tokoloshe or that the tokoloshe is a familiar of the witch, which can ride on the back of a hyena. The Gusii people of Kenya also associate hyenas with witches operating at night and tell their children they must not leave their huts at night as the witches and hyenas will catch and devour them.”

It must be said that hyenas, as Somerville does note at times, are not the only animals that have been linked to witchcraft. Animal attacks on humans in Africa – whether from the lion’s claws or the crocodile’s jaws – are often associated with witchcraft. This reviewer has raised the possibility elsewhere that the ubiquity of witchcraft belief in Africa – a conservative social force – could stem from the intensity of human/wildlife conflict in the region and the fact that an animal attack is the one natural event that can resemble an intentional act of malice.

Hyena vocalisations are also associated, to human ears, with maniacal or evil laughter. Superb predators, hyenas are also highly adaptable opportunists which, like most carnivores, will scavenge when the prospect arises. Yet the view that they are “cowardly scavengers” is widely entrenched.

The predators’ place in people’s pecking order has produced some perplexing sagas. In Namibia, a population of feral horses has been a source of conflict, with conservationists who regard them as rare pushing for protective measures such as the elimination of the region’s spotted hyenas, which prey on the equines.

“By early 2019, it reached crisis point as horse numbers plummeted from 286 to only 77. At the urging of an NGO called the Wild Horse Foundation, MET (Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism) took the bizarre decision to shoot some of the hyenas after the only foal in the herd was injured by hyenas – thereby choosing conservation of a feral species over an indigenous one,” an incredulous Somerville writes.

The ironies of the Anthropocene run rampant.

Somerville’s ire is also directed at Disney and the monstrous depiction of hyenas in 1994 cartoon film The Lion King and the digitally enhanced 2019 remake.

“The characterisation of hyenas in the two films has been hugely influential in reinforcing and advancing the concept of hyenas as evil, skulking, cowardly, destructive and cunning but stupid animals,” Somerville says.

This hardly bodes well for hyena conservation. Somerville makes the sensible observation that: “What is needed is a recalibration of our view of conservation, moving away from overemphasis on charismatic, headlining species and towards emphasis on habitat and biodiversity conservation, in which a hyena is no less important and worthy of survival than a feral horse, lion, tiger, panda or elephant.”

This reviewer’s only quibbles relate to the structure of the book, which can be redundant in places, taking away from its potential narrative pace. For example, much of the information laid out in the first chapter could have been weaved into the subsequent chapters. The estimates for populations in various countries are repeated more than once.

The book would also have benefited from more on-the-ground colour and reporting, which admittedly was not possible for most of last year because of the pandemic. Still, this stands as a definitive work on hyenas and the historical journey they have taken with humans during the Anthropocene. It is an indispensable resource for anyone with an interest in hyenas. DM/ ML/ OBP

[Lisbeth]

This Ghost Town Is Home To Africa's Rarest Predator | BBC Earth

https://youtu.be/jrc4aOfu7aQ

This elusive brown hyena has made a home in the ruins in the Namib Desert. She's raised nine generations of cubs, can she provide for her current brood in the most hostile country on the planet?

[nan]

from the ghost town

Kolmanskop - diamants - ville fantôme... fondée en 1908

Kolmanskop

[Richprins]