In run-up to Easter, fasting Ethiopians force hyenas to kill donkeys. It’s Easter.
For some of people, this means they can take up all the vices they gave up for Lent, and binge on chocolate till they feel sick. For the hyenas of northern Ethiopia, it means it’s time to stop hunting donkeys. Spotted hyenas are unfussy eaters and incredible opportunists. They can feast on rotting meat, anthrax-infected corpses, garbage and dung. They digest their food so completely that their droppings tend to consist of hair, hooves, and white powder made from broken-down bones.
Local humans tolerate the hyenas, which are affectionately known as “municipal workers”. But that changes in the run-up to Easter. Contrary to their common reputation, spotted hyenas are skilled hunters. In the Easter season of 2010, Yirga collected over 550 pieces of hyena dung from around the town of Mekelle. He found that while the Christians fast, the hyenas eat far fewer goats and sheep than they normally do.
Yirga says that this behaviour shows just how adaptable hyenas can be. Webpage of Andy Flies. Social intelligence in the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) MSU Hyena Research: Are you going to eat that? We humans usually think of ourselves as pretty smart.
One of the intelligent ideas ourancestors happened upon long ago, was the concept of cooking our food before we eat it. Many modern cultures place a good deal emphasis on cooking as a means to enrich the taste of the food. However, the overriding reason that cooking food has spread throughout human societies is that it is still the most effective way of killing microbes (bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protists) that would otherwise make us ill. For those of us that love a good steak, we often prepare the steak rare or medium rare, meaning the steak is not cooked all the way through. This is a risk we are willing to take, since not cooking the meat completely leaves the door open for microbes that are able to tolerate high temperatures.
Spotted hyenas seem to be particularly adept at dealing with microbes that would make you or I extremely sick. Kay E. Holekamp Laboratory - Welcome! Hyenas Cooperate, Problem-solve Better Than Primates. Spotted hyenas may not be smarter than chimpanzees, but a new study shows that they outperform the primates on cooperative problem-solving tests.
Captive pairs of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) that needed to tug two ropes in unison to earn a food reward cooperated successfully and learned the maneuvers quickly with no training. Experienced hyenas even helped inexperienced partners do the trick. When confronted with a similar task, chimpanzees and other primates often require extensive training and cooperation between individuals may not be easy, said Christine Drea, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University. Drea's research, published online in the October issue of Animal Behavior, shows that social carnivores like spotted hyenas that hunt in packs may be good models for investigating cooperative problem solving and the evolution of social intelligence. "No one wanted anything but primate cognition studies back then," Drea said. Drea and co-author Allisa N. Are you smarter than a Hyena? « Laelaps. Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta), the “bad guys” of the African plains.
My wife is repulsed by them, but I find something oddly intriguing about these predators; any social carnivore in which the female has a functioning pseudo-phallus nearly indistinguishable from the male’s is bound to stand out. Spotted Hyena are extremely effective, social predators, being much more effective hunters than many people think. The classic African battleground, at least in the mind of the public, features a pride of lions valiantly defending a kill from a pack of dastardly hyenas, laughing and yipping in a way that can only be described as disturbing. Just as likely as not, however, the favored lions are trying to steal prey killed by hyenas, both groups of carnivores vying for the top position in their habitats (cheetahs, wild dogs, leopards, and other smaller predators typically give up their kills to the more formidable lions and hyenas). But wait, there’s more! Like this: Like Loading...