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Hyenas, spotted and otherwise, are one of the most hated taxa on the planet. They are persecuted in a pretty big way. People have this misconception that it's like they're laughing at you or they're like laughing because they're going to get you.
What's the hyena laugh? What does it sound like?
Little like (Christine giggles) kind of thing. The one that you're going to hear the most throughout the savanna is the whoop.
Oh, can you make a whoop?
Whoo.
Whoo. Dr. Christine Wilkinson is a carnivore ecologist and conservation scientist. She's the co-chair of the IUCN Hyena Specialist Group and the founder of the Humans and Hyenas Alliance. And yes, the acronym for that is HAHA. She studies spotted hyenas in Kenya, but her real work is understanding what it takes for people and predators to actually share a landscape. And today she's here to change how you think about one of the most misunderstood animals on earth. (lively music) Welcome to "Back from the Brink", from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I'm Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant.
[Peter] Normally on this show, we hear about a species that came to the edge of disappearing, which isn't necessarily the case with the spotted hyena. But as we'll hear today, that doesn't mean they're safe. Often, it's exactly the opposite. Before we get into the conservation story, we need to understand the animal. Most people think they know what a hyena is, most people are wrong. Christine wants to fix that, starting with "The Lion King".
So ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Christine Wilkinson is here, welcome. And you have to talk to our listeners and viewers about hyenas. There's not one species of hyena. So when you say hyena, we're not talking about one thing. Like just spend some time, what is a hyena? What hyenas are we talking about with regards to your work?
I'll try to do a brief overview because I can talk about hyena day for like all day.
I know.
All Hyaenidae. So there are four species of hyenas in the family Hyaenidae, which are the spotted hyena, which are the ones you might have seen in "The Lion King", the striped hyena, also they're all, except one, they're all pretty well named. Spotted hyena, it has spots.
Great.
Striped hyena, you'll never guess what it's got on it.
I bet it's stripes.
Yeah, correct.
But a lot of stripes or just a couple of stripes?
Just a bunch of stripes actually. A good number of stripes. The brown hyena. What do we think's going on?
It's just brown fur.
Straight out brown.
I am into this.
Very straightforward. I feel like the folks who named hyenas were probably the same as the bird full. You know how birds are named really explicitly often?
Right, yeah yeah. Like redheaded, you know, whatever.
Yeah, blue footed.
Yup, yup, yup, yup.
Now I will finish the sentence. Anyway, and then there's the fourth one is the Aardwolf, which is the only one that's like, what is that? And those look like striped hyenas, but a lot smaller, spindelier, and they also only eat insects, mostly termites.
Okay, so four species of hyena and then you said the spotted hyena is what you might have seen in "The Lion King", was like assuming we've all seen it, is that an accurate depiction of the spotted hyena?
Okay, so no, for the most part. There is one thing they got right, which I'll get into in a second. But the spotted hyenas in "The Lion King", which are also the species that I study the most, by the way, are really depicted as these sort of power-hungry, evil creatures that just don't care about the ecosystem, they don't care about balance and they steal all these things from the lions and so on and so forth.
They're like the bad guys. I mean, they're not the only bad guys. They don't actually, I don't think murder anyone in that movie, but they're the bad guys.
No, they sure are trying.
They're like kind of a gang.
Yeah, they're a gang.
And they're male.
And they're male, except the leader was female.
Was she?
Whoopi Goldberg hyena.
Okay, I got to re-watch.
Was female and that's the one thing they got right, which is that spotted hyena clans are typically led by females. So there's an intricate social ranking in spotted hyena clans, which are what the groups are called. And each hyena has a ranking. Most of the time, all the females are ranked more highly than all the males because the natal males, the males that are born in the clan, while they have a high ranking, they typically immigrate out. Once you land in your new clan, you're at the bottom of the totem pole. So that's why it kind of shakes out like that. Usually females are bigger than the males as a whole. They have a lot of control over the interactions. They get the best cuts of meat, et cetera. And they're just a super highly social animal. I would say for all the other things, there are some serious issues. So first of all, hyenas are not just scavengers, they're apex predators. Spotted hyenas are competing with African lions out there on the savanna. There have been some studies that show that lions are more likely to steal hyena kills than the other way around.
Wow.
So I don't know. I mean, not a lot of studies on that, but that's what the evidence has shown. They kill, you know, upward of 60% of their own prey. They are extremely intelligent, not stupid. They can outperform chimpanzees on some problem solving tests because they're so good at cooperative problem solving because of that great sociality that they have. And they are ecosystem cleaners. They are one of the major ecosystem cleaners in the world. They can digest bone. Their poop is often pure white from the calcium.
Because of the bone. Oh my gosh.
Exactly. So they're very efficient. There was even a study done by my colleague Chin Mai in Ethiopia where basically they estimated what would happen if all of the hyenas were wiped out from a particular area of Ethiopia. And they calculated that there would be a lot more livestock disease, a lot more diseases for people, and then a ton of economic impacts coming from that based on hyenas not being around to clean everything up. They're also known to be disease endpoints for things like rabies and brucellosis. And there's a lot more work to be done in that arena.
I'm guessing maybe their stomach acid is so powerful that they can consume a carcass that has disease and then it just disappears in their stomach.
They have very powerful stomach acid. They have one of the strongest bite forces of terrestrial mammals, if not the strongest.
Wow, okay, let's hear it for the spotted hyena.
I know, they're amazing.
So what are hyena sounds? How do they vocalize? And can you actually go into these ecosystems and then just hear hyenas?
You sure can.
Ooh.
So they are very vocal as part of their very intricate sociality, spotted hyenas specifically. The one that you're going to hear the most throughout the Savannah is the whoop, which is a long distance call.
Oh, can you make a whoop?
I can and I hope that your listeners may also try whooping at home.
Everybody, this is your chance. And we're giving you permission to do a hyena whoop, okay? But please, please demonstrate for us.
Okay, here we go. Whoo.
Yes, ma'am.
Sometimes the babies have a little, they can't quite control their whoop, so sometimes it'll be like, whooa.
Which is so cute.
It's very cute.
What does a whoop mean?
So a whoop is a long distance call. You might hear them sort of doing this whoop as they're walking along by themselves or as they're sort of getting interested in maybe hunting something or maybe they've hunted something and they're like, hey, this is over here. It's something that can really be heard from really, really far away.
I can imagine.
So it's like if you need to gather or if you need to make people aware you're here, you're using your whoop. The other one that I'm sure everyone's heard of, especially if they've seen that film we keep talking about, is the giggle.
Oh yeah, because we hear of laughing hyenas.
Yes.
Yeah.
So the giggle is like, you know, little like (Christine giggles) kind of thing. And some people have this misconception that it's like they're laughing at you or they're like laughing because they're going to get you or something like that.
Like a mischievous, yeah.
But really that call is more likely to be an anxiety kind of call, like sort of a nervous call. So I mentioned that spotted hyenas have this social ranking. And so if I'm a lower ranking hyena and I'm at a carcass enjoying my delicious cuts of meat and then a higher ranking female comes up to me and is like, I want that, I will immediately scoot away to the side, put my tail up over my back in what we call bristle tail and go, (Christine giggles) sorry, basically like, that's all yours.
Oh, the laughing hyena is actually like not being aggressive, but rather being more submissive.
Yeah, sort of like we're navigating, this is a really high energy situation. Maybe we've killed a buffalo, but we're navigating these really intricate interactions while trying to get some delicious food. So I have these ways of showing like deference to my higher ranking ones, but then trying to get in and be like, oh no, just kidding. I'm not doing anything, you know? That kind of thing.
Interesting. So I mean, that makes sense. Humans hear this, we create our own story, but you as a hyena expert, you can actually be there to witness, oh, we're getting the laugh when we're in an awkward situation.
Yeah, exactly.
[Peter] So hyenas are not the cackling predators we see on screen. They're ecosystem cleaners and matriarchal cooperators. So why does almost everyone, including the communities that live alongside them, treat them like a threat? Christine has been studying that question for years.
I wanted to do a PhD where I could be helpful to people or to wildlife management and not just be like extractive or redundant. You know what I mean? And so when I was reading the literature on human wildlife conflict, like the survey-based literature, like when people do social surveys of communities would say things like hyenas are causing the most conflict and here's the percentage of conflicts of mine that have been caused by hyenas. But most of the studies on that topic had been done on things like lions and leopards, you know, the pretty kitties of the savanna. Sorry, side note, spotted hyenas are more closely related to cats than to dogs in case anyone is wondering.
Oh, wow.
They are in pheliformies, which is the cat sub order.
Yeah.
So in case you're wondering what that thing is, closely to cats.
It is neither a cat nor a dog, but if you had to choose a side, you're going, it's taxonomically on
Yeah, it's in the cat side.
the cat side, yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, but doesn't get nearly as much attention as their feline relatives of the Savannah with regard to anything, whether it's conflict research or conservation or-
Well, let me interrupt you there because you're bringing up a really good point. So in this iconic movie that we've all seen about African animals, the hyenas are depicted as like kind of dumb and you know, the bad guys, right? So in a negative light. Does that at all reflect how the communities that you were like entrenched with thought of hyenas as well?
Yes.
And like where kind of does that come from or what are your thoughts on that?
Yes, hyenas, spotted and otherwise, are one of the most hated taxa on the planet.
Wow.
There was actually a study done across continents looking at the different carnivore taxa and hyenas by and large, except for one area of India, I think where there's some religious views about striped hyenas, Hyaenidae ranked like the lowest on everyone's opinion list no matter which country you're in, very sad. But yeah, so across spotted hyena range, they are persecuted in a pretty big way. Hated, not by everyone, but like just like, you know, sort of blanket hatred for spotted hyenas. They're poisoned, their dens are burned out. In the communities where I work, I've had a GPS collared hyena poisoned before. Had dens burned out, we've found them with tires in their stomach, which I'm not sure how that's happening. It's not great, there's a lot of poor opinions of hyenas in most of their range. Why is that? A couple of reasons. One, there's some cultures where they've been associated with like sort of bad omens and witchcraft or like cultural views of hyenas that are negative based on some of their actual behaviors like you know, occasionally digging up a grave because it's food or raiding people's livestock or just things that people are like, oh, they eat everything and it's the worst and that's legit, like I understand where that comes from. But some of the perceptions around them are based in some of their anatomical characteristics, which are very unique. So there have been a good number of cultures over the years that have though that hyenas are associated with witchcraft because they appear to be hermaphrodites or hermaphroditic intersex animals.
Okay.
Because the females, and they're not, for the record, the female anatomy is very similar to the male anatomy for the spotted hyena in a way that is very fascinating and very unique to spotted hyenas and also lets the females be in charge of every interaction between females and males that happens. It's also really important for communication, social communication and body language. And it's caused some misconceptions about hyenas as well.
You have found that there's a lot of anti-hyena sentiment in communities that experience hyenas in the landscape.
Yeah, exactly, I think there are things that are shifting. I don't think that that movie that we keep referring to helped at all, let me just put it that way. They end up persecuted, et cetera. Occasionally they do like pose safety hazards for people and they sometimes raid livestock, especially if the livestock are not properly protected at night and they're very opportunistic, behaviorally flexible. They can kind of shift their behaviors depending on what resources are available and they're very clever and all of those things combined make them a bit of a formidable perceived adversary on the landscape that we're trying to coexist with if you're a community member living alongside spotted hyenas.
As much as Christine is fascinated by hyenas and how they socialize with each other, a main focus of her research is actually how hyenas and humans interact, how they can conflict and then what that means for the species. How are hyenas doing? Are spotted hyenas like an endangered species right now? Like what has their trajectory been like and how does that kind of play into this whole conversation?
Yeah, honestly, like across most of their range, from what we can tell, they're generally doing fine, but there's a big asterisk on that I wanna put.
Yeah, I was gonna say there's a but and we're scientists, so like that matters. So part of me wants to celebrate like, okay, great, we are not in danger of losing hyenas as a species right this moment. Go on with the but.
So the but is that there's not a ton of money poured into spotted hyena or any other hyena research as it is. So getting those population baselines and then looking at trends over time is not something that people have really had the capacity to do except for in a couple of cases. I think there was just a study out of an area of Tanzania that showed they're actually declining there. But like the studies on hyenas have largely been around their amazing cognition, on their sort of behavioral flexibility, those kinds of things, and not so much devoted to their populations because they just appear to be so common. And so the asterisk is like, in my mind, it's actually not been studied enough when they're declining. And I think that was the point of that paper that came out last year or the year before that was like, hey, y'all, maybe we should be keeping our eye on this a little bit more.
Right you know, and it is admittedly difficult being in conservation or being one of the scientists that informs conservation because we do sometimes have to triage, right? There are some species that literally we might be losing if we don't put time and resources and attention towards them, but at the same time, their decline might not be as obvious until it is tremendous or too late or accelerating rapidly.
At what point do we kind of actually acknowledge that hyenas might face widespread threats? They also get snared by accident by bushmeat hunters who are going for other things and they end up having these things around their necks and their legs and they're not able to disperse and like do that really important thing for their sociality and their survival and their, you know? So there's all these different elements that are increasing as far as threats to hyenas and they're really behaviorally flexible. They're really resilient, they're really clever, they're making it work overall across the board, but at what point is that sort of tipping point where we really do need cultures of coexistence and sort of capacity for communities to actually be prepared and not feel marginalized in that realm?
[Peter] Christine's work in Kenya has given her more than data, it's given her two hyenas she will never forget. Ragnar, the flamingo hunter, and a resilient gap tooth male named Smiley.
Can you give me like a really great story from the field?
We probably need to talk about Smiley.
Oh, Smiley, of course, he's our example.
So there's one hyena that has not only impressed me, but has impressed multiple filmmakers who have come out to film him doing his thing. His name is Ragnar and he is a flamingo hunter.
Oh.
And he is an expert flamingo hunter.
Ragnar.
Yeah.
Flamingos are so gorgeous, but they're full of like that really good nutrient that makes them pink, so maybe Ragnar's onto something.
He could be. I'm a little bit side note, mystified about why hyenas hunt flamingos. It's a lot of energy for like mostly bone and feather, but he'll do this route. There's a big lake, a big soda lake with a bunch of flamingos at certain times of year and you'll watch him start at the south end on the shore and like do this whole bowling ball thing through the flamingos to try to get one, maybe get one, maybe not, and then work his way up the lake hunting flamingos as he goes. And other hyenas try to learn that and they get, you know, relatively successful, but you can always tell Ragnar because he is like the dude, like every muscular, big guy. Anyway, so he is really impressive and he has caused all this great positive press around hyenas, even though he's not the first flamingo hunter, it's been happening for decades, but everyone's like, wow, this is new. You know how they get. And so we've had BBC, we've had other people come out and film him for really epic blue chip shows.
Wow.
And I just love that because now we sort of like awakened people to the plight of these hyenas in this very underserved, like not really researched area that's like urbanizing, there's all these threats in that area and this very cool, unique, globally filmed behavior is Ragnar, just showing everyone what's up. So I always like to watch Ragnar when I'm there. One of my other faves, his name is Smiley. He is so named because his lip is missing a chunk. So it's a bit cynical. He's always smiling. It's cynical to say.
Poor guy.
But he's very resilient, that chunk's been gone since I met him back in 2018. So he's, you know, still making it work. Also a big guy and we collared him. We ended up collaring him with a GPS collar in 2019 at the beginning of the year. And we were able to, from afar, watch everything that he did through his movements. So I would see him in person and see that he was like, you know, living his best life in the Observation Hill Clan, because that's what we named the clans different things. There are many different clans. Something that underprints this story is that hyena clans are very territorial. So they will like get into these battles around the boundaries. They really protect their territories for the most part. So that's something to keep in your mind as I tell you this story. So Smiley, Observation Hill Clan. We're watching on his GPS data that he is trying to disperse. As I told you, like males like to move out and go other places most of the time. And so I work in these two areas that are right across the street from each other. One of them is called Lake Nicaru National Park. The other one is called Soysambu Conservancy, literally right across the road. We see on the coller data that he's tried to disperse out of Soysambu, sort of toward that Nairobi road. And he obviously hits the road, comes back into Soysambu, sticks around in Soysambu for a while in his clan, then tries to go south. When you go south, you hit a bunch of villages that we've talked to and we know that they're not huge fans of hyenas like most people aren't, but there's also like really no natural areas for a ways. You have to really get through the communities to get to another natural area. And he came back. He went a little bit far through the communities and then came back into Soysambu. And then we are watching his collar data and with the collars, you can not just see the location, you can also see the battery life. And usually when we see the battery start to go down and down and down, then we're like, oh, we better get that collar off. It's going to die soon. But you usually can see when the collar's going to die. Smiley's collar just turned off one day.
[Rae] Whoa.
And we were so confused. The battery was fine. This was when I was in, it was during the pandemic, so I couldn't get back to physically go try and look for him for like a year and a half. And I was really worried 'cause the last thing he was seen doing with his collar data was moving up to the next clan, which was like the one just north.
Don't do it, Smiley.
Yeah and I was like, oh, they must have knocked him out basically. Like must have killed him and they ruined the collar.
Killed the collar, yeah.
Yeah, like donezo, done and dusted. And I was like, oh, rest in peace, Smiley. Nobody had seen him. And I have lots of people on the ground who live on that land, had not seen this hyena and he's such a notable hyena. And I was like, he must be dead. And it was sad, so on. So I go back in 2022 to take the collars off of my collared hyenas at last. And there was one hyena that I knew was always in this one area, this one field, every day. So I was like, I know how to get this one. He'll be really easy to get. And we were watching this hyena's collar data, I brought my laptop out in the field, I had the vet team with me, had a bunch of rotting meat that we used to try and keep them in the area.
Got to have it.
As a vegetarian, very exciting times. And I was like, this is exactly where this hyena is, right over here, over this hill. This like completely different hyena we were trying to get. So we're watching and we see a hyena with a collar coming and we're like, oh, that's him, let's get ready, let's get back in our cars, let's put the hyena calls, because they have vocalizations that they make that we call them in. And he comes around up the hill and we see that it's actually smiley. It is not the one we were tracking.
Oh my God.
It's smiley wearing the collar that is dead, but he is not dead.
And he's smiling.
Yeah. He's still smiling because he has no choice, poor guy. But he's totally fine, looking healthy, muscular, robust and we were like,
What in the world?
I was shocked. We had to be quiet, so it took all of me not to like squeal in celebration that this guy was alive. Such a surprise.
Wow.
Such a resilient animal. And so we ended up capturing him and doing an assessment, taking the collar off, all the things. He looked totally healthy, totally great, very alive.
What was up with the collar? It just died?
No clue to this day.
Oh my gosh, that gave you a heart attack.
Yeah, so we thought he was dead, and this guy has been through hell and high water. And it really shows us, I think, the resilience of spotted hyenas. Like he's been through getting his lip removed, like going on a world tour of all the developed areas in the area.
Right.
Who knows what happened when he moved because he did actually move into that clan, and now he's in that other clan, which is kind of exciting.
So he made it, okay, good.
He made it and he was totally healthy. No wounds or anything.
Let's say that someone today learned like, gosh, I'm a hyena person. I want to help them. Like what do you say to people like that when they want to really get involved?
Yeah, there are so many ways. I think that telling all of your kids and their friends and your family members about how cool hyenas are.
Sure.
You can also, if you'd like to, you can support our work at Soysambu through the just going to soysambuconservancy.org, donating and saying that you're donating to the Hyena Project. And that'll support our research and support us trying to build a field station so that we can actually bring students out from the community and train them up without it being too dangerous.
Dr. Christine Wilkinson, I cannot thank you enough for joining us on "Back From The Brink". You are a fabulous person in real life. We only touched on a little bit of your knowledge, so we'll have to have you back, but thank you so much for this wonderful, wonderful session.
Thanks for having me. I feel like I really like to end Hyena interviews by doing a whoop together if you're up for it.
Oh gosh, okay, ready?
One, two, three. Whoo, excellent.
Whoo.
Ta-da.
[Peter] Spotted hyenas aren't disappearing, not yet, but the science to keep them from getting there hasn't been funded. The communities living alongside them haven't always been heard and the reputation that follows them built by decades of questionable storytelling hasn't been corrected either. Dr. Christine Wilkinson is doing something about all of that from a field site in Kenya through an organization called the Human and Hyenas Alliance. The long-term goal, putting that work entirely in local hands.
If you're now thinking that a certain big Hollywood movie may have done the hyenas dirty, good. Maybe it's time to give them a second chance after all. Remember, they're not laughing at you, they're laughing with you. Thanks for watching. Follow or subscribe, leave a review, and send this to the one person in your life who's been whooping it up at home since the middle of this episode. Hopefully not in the car with you. I'm Dr. Ray Wynn-Grant and I'll see you next time on "Back From The Brink" from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
[Peter] The "Back From The Brink" podcast is sponsored by Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, hosted by Dr. Ray Wynn-Grant, narrated by Peter Gros, executive producers are Jen Wulf and Jenny Van Soelen, podcast production by Lower Street Media. (lively music)
