Dreaming with Hyenas (Little Green Notebook)
And other lullabies on the mara
Nighttime in Masai Mara, Kenya, snug in my sleeping bag in a tent, I’d lay awake listening to the sounds of the dark. Other campers breathed heavily, the slack-throated inhales and exhales of deep sleepers. Outside, the askaris, our guardians, talked quietly in their own languages, often singing to stay awake, their voices rising high, vacillating on the notes in a melody unlike any in my culture.
Sometimes we heard lions. They grunted, their guttural voices falling deep and low, landing with a chilling thud.
Some sounds were unrecognizable.
“Were there dogs out here last night?” I asked Daktari, head of our research project, as we sat around the smoldering campfire one morning.
“Zebras,” he said, stirring sugar into his coffee as I contemplated barking zebras.
One night I heard laughing. Hyenas! I hadn’t expected their laughter to sound so human. They chuckled, ha-ha-ha! They chortled. And then they howled, the opposite of a lion’s grunt, more like the songs of the ascaris -- first low, then sliding into a yelp, then laughter!
We talked about the hyenas that morning.
“Ah, you heard the fisi,” Konoso, the English-speaking askari, said, teaching us a bit of Swahili.
I grew to love the night sounds of Masai Mara. I’d set my little tape recorder just outside my tent to capture the lullaby.
Despite their nighttime serenades, I only saw hyenas once. A clan had gathered around a carcass; their bloodied faces turned to us briefly when we drove past.
“They eat the bones and all,” Daktari said.
Those hyenas looked just like the ones I’d seen on nature shows and in cartoons -- brutal, blood-thirsty, scraggly, shaggy-maned scavengers all. Even so, I immediately liked them. I was stamped at birth as an animal lover and have especially cheered the least beloved as early as I can recall. Those round ears, they’re cute. And those spots along the neck? Who doesn’t love a Spotted?
If this trip had happened today, we youngsters would’ve been glued to our cell phones, texting and Instagramming and looking up cool facts about hyenas. But this was 1985, and even the most imaginative of us could not have conceived of our phone-bound futures.
This morning, I was casually reading a real-live print magazine when I came upon some information about female spotted hyenas, Crocuta crocuta, the species native to Kenya. It seems female spotted hyenas have a pseudo-penis that rivals that of males. They copulate, urinate, and give birth through this dangling flesh, two of those three acts complicated by the shape and size of the appendage. In fact, first time mothers have a death rate of nine to eighteen percent, and up to sixty percent of their pups suffocate during birth.
Good gracious. I closed the magazine and headed to my computer. What else did I not know about fisi?
A lot, it turns out. I’ll share.
Hyena clans are matriarchal, with females being up to ten percent larger than the males, and much more aggressive. Male hyenas occupy the lowest positions in the clan, something the females maintain by choosing the most docile males as reproductive partners. Clan leadership is passed on to the matriarch’s fiercest female offspring.
The female aggression begins in the womb, where cubs are exposed to high levels of androgens, a group of masculinizing hormones that includes testosterone. It’s far more complicated than that, but the result is that hyena cubs are born so aggressive, females especially, that they often begin fighting at birth, sometimes killing a sibling. Female cubs have more testosterone than males, but over time, those hormones level out. While adult males have higher testosterone levels, they never catch up to the ferocity of their female counterparts.
Why so fierce? Why so androgen-riddled that they have pseudo-penises causing high rates of fatalities in mothers and cubs?
It seems that spotted hyenas have the greatest energy investment per litter of any mammal. Food is scarce, childbirth is dangerous. Natural selection has favored the most aggressive mothers.
I’m perplexed by this see-saw of risk versus benefit, but it seems the spotted hyenas are doing okay, with their numbers decreasing but still classified as “of least concern.”
Oh, there is so much more to ponder about hyenas, like the twelve distinct vocalizations they make, and the four extant species. We’ve yet to speak of their lovely heads, some rare blend of canine, feline, ursine, and vulpine. Born to run, scrappy survivalists, fierce and loyal, they are so worthy of admiration.
Isn’t this world a wonder?
Although I have long lost my cassette of lullabies on the mara, I can pull up a video of those very sounds on my computer, put my headphones on, and remember what it felt like to sleep outside in Kenya, part of an untamed ecosystem, sharing my dreams with hyenas.
AMAZON LINK MARY DANSAK WEBPAGE LINK
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I knew hyenas were matriarchal Abd the females more aggressive, but I didn't know about the psuedo-penis. 😳 Learn something new every day.
I so enjoyed this post, Mary. Bedding down in a tent, walled off from seeing what’s going on outside, is an act of trust. And thanks for this tutorial on hyenas. So much more than just their spots!