STRIPED HYENA.
(Hyaena striata.)
THE STRIPED HYENA.
(Hyaena striata.)
The first Hyena in which I became interested lived in a zoölogical garden connected with a well known park.
I cannot claim that she was a beautiful creature for, if all must be told, she had the same ugly appearance of every other Striped Hyena. And yet her very ugliness made her somewhat interesting. She would look at me from her slanting eyes with an unsteady, uncanny expression. Her thick head and neck, her stout body, her shorter hind legs and longer front ones, causing her back to slope from shoulder to tail like a small toboggan slide, gave her an extremely awkward look, I admit; and then she had but four toes on each foot as is the case of all members of the hyena family. Her body was covered with rather long coarse hair of a yellowish gray color striped with black, her tail was short and bushy, and along the spine the hair grew long and stiff, making a sort of mane. Her ears were large, erect and devoid of hair, and her voice—well! it was something to startle the uninitiated. There were shrieks, murmurs and growls, sometimes hoarse and sometimes shrill, and yet I am told that it is mild and musical compared with the ghostly laughter of her cousin, the spotted hyena, and yet her voice is not pleasant to hear.
In spite of all these characteristics I was interested in Mrs. Hyena, perhaps on account of her unhappy lot, for she was not loved as were other animals around her. There was Duchess, the elephant, Major, the lion, and other favored ones whose personality was recognized, as they all had names and they received much attention. But Mrs. Hyena had no name, for the keeper declared that she was such a miserably cowardly mean creature that she was not worth one. She was only the “Hyena” to him, though he had cared for her for many years and sometimes had been obliged to put her in the hospital because her mate had mauled and punished her so badly.
And was she not to be pitied because she was so far from those of her own kind? for hyenas are not native in the new hemisphere and to seek her own, she would be obliged to cross the ocean to the coast of Africa. There she would find many of her own kind and should she cross into southern Asia as far as the Bay of Bengal she would still find many friends, while in central and southern Africa her cousin, the spotted hyena, would be plentiful, and at the south, along the western coast, her other cousin, the brown hyena, would be found.
In spite of the large area in which the various members of the family may be found a traveler may be in the country some time without seeing one, for they are nocturnal in their habits, hiding by day in their haunts among the rock-cut tombs in Syria and Palestine or among holes and caves in the rocks in other countries, sometime lurking among ruins, but more often inhabiting a den made by digging a hole in the side of a cliff or ravine.
But at night it is heard, if not seen, as it goes forth to seek its food. It prefers food already killed and only attacks a living animal when driven to it by lack of carrion. Its powerful jaws enable it to crush the bones which other animals leave. As the cleaning up of the world must be done in some way for the good of all, can we not believe that the hyena has an important mission to fulfil in spite of the strong feeling against it? It takes what other animals leave and is the vulture among beasts.
There seems to be little known about the brown hyena. It is found in a comparatively small region and is in some respects like the spotted hyena though it is smaller, being about the size of the Striped Hyena.
The spotted hyena is the largest of the three, the most ferocious, stupid and cruel. Owing to the legs being nearly of the same length it is less awkward than the striped species.