So considering much of our work depends on identifying individual hyenas, I figured I’d give you a little insight into the daily work of a hyena researcher. But first, a random tangent.
The other day we had just arrived at a den scene where there were only a few animals present. A tour vehicle rolled up next to us and seemed extremely perplexed as they looked through their binoculars and point and shoot digital cameras. Finally, one of them turned to us (thinking that we must certainly know a little more of what is going on, after all, our car does say “Hyena Research” plastered all over the side with nice hyena decals; see camp life post). Now I was expecting some in-depth question about hyena behavior, our research in general, or why female hyenas have, what we call, pseudo-penises. To my surprise, all they wanted to know was the sex of the animal before their eyes, and what the smaller animal was doing to it.
“Oh, that’s a female. They’re nursing.” I replied.
After answering her question, I was met with “You are hyena expert!”
Now I don’t know if I am a hyena expert (yet?), but it was certainly flattering.
Back to ID-ing individual hyenas.
So to many people’s surprise (mine included) the spot patterns on spotted hyenas are very individualistic. Take these two animals for instance:
Clearly, their spot patterns are different. The best part of identifying hyenas is that everyone sees something different in their spots. Just the other day, I saw what I called “a sock puppet,” whereas Jeff, the other hyena research assistant out here saw “a wave crashing on a little dude.”
Other great ways to ID hyenas is through ear damage. Many lower ranking animals will have the scars to prove it (especially on their ears). Take Avalanche here:
He has what we call a right A nick and C notch. If you look closely at his right ear, you can see that some of his ear cartilage is missing.
So who’s ready to ID this animal?
What do you see?
