It’s late afternoon along the Luvuvhu, that magical hour when the glare softens, the heat ebbs, the colours deepen and the fragrances of the floodplain melt into the gathering dusk. We are a few kilometres east of the camp, waiting near a giant nyala berry for the clan to emerge. The den is occupied but thus far there is no sign that its denizens are readying themselves for the night. We are aware of a large female, stretched out in the dust, a stone’s throw to our left. She is relaxed, unperturbed by our presence. PJ recognises her because he’s seen her many times before, most recently in April when she was feeding on a nyala under the main deck of Pafuri Camp. She was the last to stand her ground when first one, then several, great crocodiles emerged from the river, dragging themselves up the bank to drive the hyenas off their kill. He’s fairly sure she’s the Mayingani matriarch – she certainly looks the part – but we’ll have to wait for the results of Dr Neil Parkin’s work to confirm PJ’s suspicion. Neil will be observing and photographing the clan for a few months, starting in August 2024. We’ll keep you posted as he deepens our understanding of these often maligned but magnificent creatures.
Hyenas get a bad rap. Dutch biologist Hans Kruuk’s family must have looked at him askance when, in the late sixties, he announced that he would be heading off to Tanzania for some years, braving the tsetse flies and lack of European plumbing, to study the spotted hyena of all things.
We imagine a young Hans sitting at the table, his family going off their dinner, as he reads Ernest Hemingway’s horrifying account of hunting hyena: “The hyena, hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones that the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain, looking back, mongrel dog-smart in the face.”
You might have guessed by now that at Pafuri we have a thing for hyenas. We realise that the Hemingway quote above might have made you a little apprehensive of our enthusiasm for these creatures. But we’re asking you – like our young Hans – to stick with us a little longer. Hyenas are extraordinary. Their behaviour, intelligence, and complex social structures have charmed all those who have spent any significant time observing them. Regardless of where Kruuk started, he certainly found a deep and profound respect for the hyena. He would end up spending many decades observing and writing about them, devoting himself to altering the poor public perception of these unique beasts. In 1990, he wrote “… there is a magic about hyaenas which can only be understood by those of us who have watched them, for some time. There is now a growing band of us, who came to the African bush with all our prejudices, with all that ‘common knowledge’ about hyaenas which proved so wrong, and who just fell for the spell of animals which were so totally different.”
What Kruuk discovered about the “hermaphroditic self-eating devourer(s) of the dead”, fundamentally altered our understanding of hyenas’ behaviour and importance for the environment. But, before we get to that, let’s address the phallus in the room: Hyenas are in fact not hermaphroditic, nor are they capable of spontaneously switching sex. You would think the latter is obvious, but not so! The phallic fable persisted from Aristotle through the ages. Claims of hermaphrodism arise from the fact that female hyenas have display penises. The labia have fused to form a fatty pouch that resembles testicles, and the clitoris is elongated such that it appears to be a penis. Female hyenas can even have erections. Internally, however, they are like other female mammals
Hyenas live in large, female-dominated social organisations known as clans. Their complex hierarchies, loyalties, nuanced interactions, and division of labour are like those observed in higher order primates. Mothers and daughters dominate the den, while the absolutely subservient males migrate between clans. Despite being characterised as scavengers, these girl gangs are exceptional hunters, regularly engaging in coordinated strategies to bring down large prey. In fact, Kruuk found that lions more frequently scavenge from hyenas than the other way around. However, we should say at this point that it’s time we stop looking down on scavengers. Scavenging is a critical part of any healthy ecosystem. And let us tell you, it certainly helps to keep stink levels at bay. Can you imagine how fetid the veld would be without our sensational scavengers?
Now, perhaps, you can begin to appreciate the heartbreak of Kruuk and his fellow hyena-hype-dudes when The Lion King came out in 1994. A team of dedicated scientists at the University of California had allowed Disney animators to observe their hyena colony in the hills beyond the Berkeley campus. The scientists made only one request: to have their beloved creatures represented in a positive light. The animators smiled, shook hands, and proceeded to sketch hyenas as gluttonous, malodorous, malicious and cowardly. This portrayal is not only inaccurate but also damaging. While hyenas are perceived so poorly, protecting them becomes extremely difficult. Who’s going to look after the well-being of an animal that no one squeals over in delight? But hyenas support numerous other species – vultures, jackals, and many more – with their kills. By tonnage of meat consumed, spotted hyenas are the most important terrestrial predator in Africa.
Today, hyenas are an integral part of Pafuri’s unique apex predator story. Until the great flood of 2013, lions prevailed along the Luvuvhu floodplain. Hyenas only occasionally ventured down from their dens in the sandstones to the west. But for reasons that we don’t fully understand, the pride was disrupted, possibly by the floods and the loss of the dominant male to hunters north of the border. That was the moment the hyenas moved in and established themselves as the principal predators along the rich hunting grounds along the river. Today, the clan is well-established. But they are in constant battle with the other great hunters of Pafuri – the many leopards that live and kill in the same area, those great crocodiles of the Luvuvhu we referred to above. Who knows how long this dynamic will remain? Pafuri is a place of constant change. Someday, the balance of power will shift again. A new pride of lions, powerful enough to establish dominance will drive the hyenas back into the hills where they once denned; then the lions will again reign on the floodplain and the hyenas will become the raiders they once were.
For now though, we have the spectacle of the clan emerging from their den to savour. Soon, the adults will appear, strutting and proud, followed by the youngsters, frolicking, curiously sniffing at each other and the vehicle. We’ll enjoy their elaborate greeting rituals before the elders fan out into the bush for their nightly forays. Later, while supping and dancing in the boma, on our way back to our tents and, later still, when we’re tucked in under our mosquito nets, we’ll listen to their eerie calls as they hunt and scavenge across the floodplains. We’ll imagine the matriarch at the head of the hunt, magnificent apex predator that she is, queen supreme of the Pafuri night.
Oh, and there’s more… This story involved a mother of mothers, a Dutch biologist, a confusing crotch, and Walt Disney. But there’s another hyena story to be told: the animal holds a very special place in the heart and lore of the Makuleke community. That one will involve a war, a king, a murder and much more. But we’ll keep it for next time.