Hyaenidology (HYENAS) with Christine Wilkinson

Giggles. Pseudopenises. Matriarchies? Media slander. Hyaenidologist Dr. Christine Wilkinson delivers stories about the nature of matrilinearity, hot Lion King gossip, bristle backs, tiny heads, big teeth, animation errors, human-hyena interactions, tongue bumps, termite poisons, lawsuits, and why these animals have been robbed of respect and denied the devotion the so deserve. Ready yourself for stories from this delightful carnivore ecologist, hyena researcher, PBS science communicator, National Geographic Explorer, and curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. And raise a glass to your new favorite undercats.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, hey, it's the guy in overalls and no shirt, Ally Ward, and I'm glad you're here every minute of this episode is a gift. So I asked around to some past Ologies guests. I was like, who are you excited about in science right now? And within like five minutes, I got two texts telling me that I needed to meet this specific ologist like ASAP, a conservation scientist, a carnivore ecologist, an urban ecologist. They work in LA. They got their bachelor's at Cornell, a PhD at UC Berkeley. They're now an assistant curator of community science at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. They're the co-chair also of the hyena specialist group. They're also a National Geographic Explorer.

• 0:41Alie Ward?

  They're also a PBS science communicator and a co-founder of the beloved Black Mamalogist Week. I moseyed over to the museum as fast as I could and I was like, please let me talk to you. So in this episode, we're going to chat about everything from hyenas in the media, what they're eating, are they matriarchal? We're going to talk about hormones, why the ladies have a penis, pretty much, so much more. But first, let's thank the patrons of the show for supporting us from the beginning for as little as a dollar a month via patreon.com/ologies and for submitting so many great questions every week. Thank you to everyone out there wearing Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. Thanks to everyone spreading the word about our spinoff show, which is Smologies. Those are shorter, classroom-safe episodes of Ologies.

• 1:23Alie Ward?

  They're in their very own podcast feed. They're linked in the show notes, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, Smologies. Also, thanks to everyone who leaves reviews for the show. They help us so much. I read them all and I prove it with a recent one, like this one from Lizelle23. And Lizelle wrote, "This show is like browsing the old Blockbuster Video stores and not knowing if I'm going to like the video, but surprise, I always like the episodes." Lizelle23, thank you for that. I like you. And I like sponsors of the show who make it possible to donate to a cause of the ologists choosing every week. This episode is sponsored by Seed. Bloating, irregular bowel movement, gas. When your gut is off, it gets your attention. Seed's DS1 is a three-time award-winning probiotic clinically

• 2:08Alie Ward?

  shown to improve regularity, reduce bloating, and alleviate gas, so you can move and eat more freely. Take better care of your gut with Seed. Get 25% off with code 25OLOGIES at seed.com/ologies. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. We have to say that. Father Ward, you say, "There's no way you would need a career coach. You have it all together." That's a lie, and you know it. I actually hired a career coach, and without them, I wouldn't have started Ologies. It was one of the best investments I've ever made. And if you're like, "I don't know where to find a career coach," I can help you. You need an experienced pro who asks the right questions, sets you down a path where you're

• 2:51Alie Ward?

  most likely to succeed. And that's what you can expect from a coach at today's sponsor, strawberry.me. This is so cool. They match you with a certified coach who's been vetted to work closely with company founders. And yeah, sometimes I'm like, oh, wait, that's right, I am one. And if you're founding a business, even if you're along the way and you're maybe stuck in a rut, or you have to make a decision about expansion, or what direction you want to take your company, that's what I did. I went to strawberry.me and I was like, okay, can you help me pare down some stuff? I think I have too much on my plate. I'm not sure what to say yes to and what to say no to. And they were super helpful in helping me streamline, and now I get to sleep more, and I enjoy that. So get the

• 3:30Alie Ward?

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• 3:40Alie Ward?

  All right, okay, let's get into it. Hyena, it's an ancient Greek word for pig. It's in the feminine form, so it's the study of animals that are called lady swine, even though they are not. So sit tight. Let's talk about the Lion King, pseudopenises, dining with lions, tongue bumps, termite poisons, lawsuits, bristlebacks, tiny heads, big teeth, animation errors, bumping around through the bush on a tiny Jeep thing, sniffing out hyenas, human hyena interactions, cats versus dogs, and why these animals have been robbed of respect and denied the devotion they so deserve with researcher, carnivore ecologist, and hyenologist, Dr. Christine Wilkinson.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  My name is Christine Wilkinson, and I use she pronouns.

• 4:45Alie Ward?

  I called you Dr. Wilkinson when I walked up and you jumped scared. You were like, "Oh."

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yes, technically, that's my name as well.

• 4:54Alie Ward?

  Doctor.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  A woman of many names.

• 4:57Alie Ward?

  I was going to chat with you about coyotes or hyenas. You're good at both of them. And that was one of the harder decisions I've had to make in the history of Ologies, is which do I talk to you about? So we're going hyenas. How often do you get to meet a hyena expert?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. They're underserved.

• 5:17Alie Ward?

  And a canid?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  They are a feliform.

• 5:20Alie Ward?

  What the? Already?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  What the feliform?

• 5:22Alie Ward?

  Already. I'm like, I'm out of my depth.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Shall I go into it?

• 5:25Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Please do.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  They are in feliformia, which is the cat suborder. So they are more closely related to cats than to dogs. Dogs are in caniformia.

• 5:34Alie Ward?

  No.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  I know.

• 5:36Alie Ward?

  What?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  So hyena day, which is the hyena family, is closely related to things like mongooses, et cetera, civets, et cetera.

• 5:47Alie Ward?

  What?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  So they are, they may look like a dog, a bear, something completely undefinable, but they are feliforms.

• 5:54Alie Ward?

  A chupacabra at times. It's interesting because they don't look like a cat at all, but they definitely look like a dog that you're like, what, what kind of dog is that? And you just can't figure it out. Okay, how big is a hyena? And I'm sure they range based on species, right?

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yes, they do. So there are four species living in hyena day, although there have been up to maybe 100 throughout time. So there are four species. There's the spotted hyena, which most people know about. There's the striped hyena. There's the brown hyena. And there's the aardwolf, which is the wild card of the four.

• 6:31Alie Ward?

  All the same genus or no?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  They're all in the same family, hyena day. Well, actually, now they're all four in different geni as well, genuses.

• 6:41Alie Ward?

  Really? They're each in their own genus?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  But the striped and the brown used to be in the same genus, hyena, which is really original, H-Y-A-N-A. So the striped is hyena hyena. The brown is actually para hyena brnea. It used to be hyena brnea. The spotted is crocuta crocuta. And I know, they make it really easy for a hyena hyena. And then the aardwolf is protellus cristata, and it's the one that is very much the least related to the other three.

• 7:10Alie Ward?

  What do you think happened to the other 96 in time? Because they seem like they would absolutely destroy. Like, they seem like they'd kick ass forever.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  I know, right? So hyenas began to evolve in the jungles of the Miocene Eurasia.

• 7:28Alie Ward?

  So the Miocene was 23 to 5.3 million years ago. And early, early, Afro-Arabia smashed into Eurasia.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  And a lot of things in that time were arboreal because there were a lot of trees around in the jungles. But these animals were not. They started to evolve kind of getting bigger and bigger, becoming more and more able to do things like long distance running. And there were fewer trees. There were more open spaces, more grasslands, more shrublands. And so we had a split where they started out sort of the ancient lineage of hyenas that are closer to the aardwolf, that are not like these big, massive-jawed, bone-crushing hyenas that you see in spotted, striped, and brown. And then these bone-crushing hyenas started to evolve like 14 or so, maybe a little bit longer, a million years

• 8:18Speaker 01

  ago, because they were competing with canids for sort of that niche of running around to get your prey and running in these groups to get prey. And so they needed to evolve a way to get more from the prey, to be able to actually eat the bone marrow, crush the bones, and be able to use them.

• 8:38Alie Ward?

  So bone crushing, is that a term that scientists use, or is that just like a descriptor that's more casual? Because a bone crusher?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:47Alie Ward?

  It doesn't go harder than that.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  It's a scientific term.

• 8:49Alie Ward?

  Is it really?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, this group of hyenas, that includes the three that I mentioned?

• 8:54Alie Ward?

  So these are the striped hyena, the brown hyena, and the spotted hyena.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Are in the bone-crushing lineage.

• 9:01Alie Ward?

  That's so, that is such an undersung term.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:06Alie Ward?

  The fact that we don't just call them bone crushers is a huge disservice to the brand.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, although the brand, I must say, maybe wouldn't make a fit from more attention to the bone-crushing abilities.

• 9:20Alie Ward?

  You mentioned that they haven't always been very popular.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:25Alie Ward?

  Have we seen going from way back to now, have human beings been like, I don't think so, not in my backyard, kind of, and tried to kill them off?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  I do know that they probably did prey on humans at some points from some of the cave data they have. But these days, there are a lot of different cultural views on hyenas. Disney did not do spotted hyenas any favors.

• 9:52Alie Ward?

  I was going to ask about that.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Well, he started it. Look at you guys. No wonder we're dangling at the bottom of the food chain. Man, I hate dangling. Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I would argue probably fueled actual persecution of hyenas. But persecution was already happening and continues to happen. In some places, hyenas are associated with witchcraft. I should say, just to give you the lay down. Spotted hyenas, apex predators, also do a lot of scavenging.

• 10:21Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  But they actually compete with lions, contrary to what

• 10:25Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  The Lion King really showed you. And some are, in some places, the lions are the ones stealing their kills, not the other way around.

• 10:32Alie Ward?

  No.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yes. So they're bone crushing, but they're also hunters and they have a whole bunch of interesting social dynamics. The striped hyena is a bone crusher that occasionally hunts like very small prey. The largest would be like the baby of an ungulate, but they usually scavenge. And then the brown hyena usually scavenges with the exception of they do kill seal pups on the Namibian coast, skeleton coast.

• 10:55Alie Ward?

  There are seal pups over there?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a desert with a ocean.

• 11:00Alie Ward?

  What?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very strange.

• 11:01Alie Ward?

  Just trotting off to the beach.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 11:04Alie Ward?

  Nabbing a pup and then

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:06Alie Ward?

  Heading back.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Into the desert. It's weird.

• 11:08Alie Ward?

  Wow, that sounds like a mishmash of AI that doesn't know what it's talking about, but it's real.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So those are, you know, they bone crush. And then aardwolves actually only eat termites for the most part.

• 11:20Alie Ward?

  They only eat? So is that, are they aardvarks and aardwolves? Is aard meaning termite?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  That is such a good question. Wait, I feel like I knew the answer to this question. I think the answer is no, but why aard? Why aard? I don't know.

• 11:36Alie Ward?

  There's gotta be some good etymology in there. I'll look it up.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:39Alie Ward?

  This is where an aside will go, because aardvark and aardwolf. Hey, here we are. So in Afrikaans, this is a language derived from Dutch colonizers. Aardvark means earth pig and aardwolf means earth wolf. So they're little dirt doggies, but really closer to soil kitties, really. And these brush colored tiger striped little cuties, they have a long ass neck. Looks absolutely bonkers. They got a tiny little head with bald looking snout and a tongue that is polka dotted with these raised bumps.

• 12:17Alie Ward?

  And do not, don't look up a fuzzy four pound giant eared aardwolf cub unless you are in a safe spot to wail about never getting to cuddle one. I'm not going to recover from looking at a picture of them. So they're only eating termites, so they're just having to get, I imagine, a lot of biomass to sustain a dog like creature, right?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, I think your adult aardwolf can eat like 300,000 termites a night.

• 12:47Alie Ward?

  How are the termites dealing with that?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  They don't eat termites inside of the mounds.

• 12:53Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  They eat them just like the ones that are outside or on it. And they have a sticky tongue they lap it up with. Some people used to think that they ate carcasses or that kind of thing, but actually it's been shown they're eating the insects off of the carcass.

• 13:06Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So mostly that, I think there's only ever been one case that's been documented of an aardwolf killing a goose. And I don't really understand how it did that or how it ate it because it doesn't have the right teeth for it.

• 13:17Alie Ward?

  What kind of teeth does it have?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Just little like nubs. Oh, I mean, it has its canines and stuff for like display and stuff like that and fighting, but like it doesn't need teeth. It just like swallows the termites, so.

• 13:29Alie Ward?

  It's wild to me that some of them are bone crushers and others have nubbins to eat like worms. You know what I mean? A little wormy creatures just pop in them like Rice Krispies.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:41Alie Ward?

  I looked up the goose incident and yeah, you can get deep into the paper. A novel record of aardwolf feeding behavior, which alleges that an aardwolf killed two captive geese at a South African wildlife preserve at 0700 hours on the 10th of June, 2012. And like an urban legend made to scare teenagers, the paper details that the weather was clear and bright and that the previous evening coincided with the first frost of the winter. The aardwolf was able to gain access via the gap between the gate and the fence. And a worker saw with her own eyes that the aardwolf had, quote, "already killed and partially eaten one adult goose"

• 14:21Alie Ward?

  and had the head of a second in its mouth, appearing to be suffocating it. However, I want to note that compared to this single indictment on paper, we have way more eyewitness reports of the 2016 clown sightings. I motion for aardwolf exoneration. Not enough evidence and only one witness testimony, come on. So what about their size and like body shape? Do they range among the four? Like, are some of them like a Pomeranian and some are like a Malamute?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yes, especially the bone crushers versus the aardwolves. So the aardwolf is pretty small, little spindly guy. It's like 20 something pounds or maybe a little bit more, like something quite small. Not a large dog size, maybe a medium dog. Very spindly, doesn't need a lot of power in that jaw, right? So like it doesn't have the robust musculature and stuff and everything that you need on your skull for that. They get bigger looking when they are threatened by something. They'll like raise their mane on the back and look all cute and fluffy.

• 15:26Alie Ward?

  Is it kind of spiky? Is it really thick guard hairs that can bristle up?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they kind of bristle. And actually, I have only ever touched spotted hyenas, but I can tell you that like a spotted hyena has much coarser hair than a lion or a coyote or a bobcat or something like that.

• 15:46Alie Ward?

  Ooh, any idea why?

• 15:48Speaker 01

  No, this was literally a question I was asked the other day and I was like, I have no effing clue, actually. I'm like, I wonder if anyone studied that? And I doubt it because like people don't study hyenas as much as they should.

• 15:58Alie Ward?

  Are there a lot of hyena scientists? Are there a couple of you?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  There are more than you think, but fewer than there should be. We have, so like dedicated hyena researchers. Gosh, I think I could probably not tell you more than 15.

• 16:14Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's so nuts.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Maybe 20.

• 16:17Alie Ward?

  That's so cool.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:19Alie Ward?

  You could fit that on a, in a small bus, you know?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  You could fit it in an aardwolf's tummy.

• 16:23Alie Ward?

  You could put it in an aardwolf's tummy. Okay, so size wise, aardwolves are the littlest. So they have guard hairs, they got nubbing teeth, they're lapping up bugs.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Eating bugs. They have five toes on their front paws and I'm not really sure why, except that they're more primitive, like from the more primitive lineage. And they didn't get rid of the other toes. They look really similar to striped hyenas, except they're a lot smaller and spindelier. They're easy to tell apart. So striped hyenas look almost the same as an aardwolf, just bigger, slightly lighter in color, much more robust skull, getting up to like 120 pounds.

• 16:58Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, like there's a range there, maybe 100 pounds.

• 17:02Alie Ward?

  It's no joke. Okay, so an aardwolf, remember those are the bug eaters. They're about the size and kind of the shape of a whippet. Whereas the three species of bone crushers, the striped, the spotted and the brown hyenas, those are in size like a German shepherd up to a Bernese mountain dog. But they have a spiky ridge of fur along their back. They are not something that would sleep in your bed.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Brown hyenas around the same. Both brown and striped have like these long sort of fur on their backs. Brown is really long and shaggy. Brown hyenas, you'll never guess this, but it's brown.

• 17:42Alie Ward?

  Oh, whoa, really?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  The striped one is striped.

• 17:46Alie Ward?

  Okay, wait.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And the spotted is, well, it's spotted.

• 17:49Alie Ward?

  I'm gonna just jot that down because I'm gonna forget.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Very creative ways to tell them apart.

• 17:56Alie Ward?

  What's with the back crest? Like, why do they look like javelinas? Why do some of them have like a shoulder crest, you know?

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Well, I know for the aardwolves, they extend that mane to like look bigger when they feel threatened.

• 18:08Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  I would put money on striped hyenas doing that to some extent, but I've never seen it and I don't know the answer.

• 18:14Alie Ward?

  How is a lot of the information gathered? Is it mostly camera traps? How typically these days do people study or count them?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  So camera traps are the most reliable. Doing things like point counts really aren't necessarily that reliable, especially for like a spotted hyena. We're like, these animals could be really cryptic. So what people used to do, and to some extent still do, is like call ins for spotted hyenas. Cause they have all these calls you can use.

• 18:42Alie Ward?

  What?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Which is also how we capture them when we put GPS collars on them.

• 18:45Alie Ward?

  What kind of calls?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Would you like me to do the most common one you'll hear?

• 18:49Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  The most common one is called the whoop, because it sounds like whoop. So it's like this.

• 18:55Alie Ward?

  Woo.

• 18:58Alie Ward?

  That's gotta freak people out if you've never heard that.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so at night, that's what you hear. It's a long-distance call. It's the thing where they're kind of like, "I'm here, are you here?" Or like, you'll hear it around if there's something that they're gonna try to do together, or like, something that's being hunted, maybe. And it's what you hear all night. It's very comforting to me, honestly.

• 19:16Alie Ward?

  It sounds beautiful.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  And the babies, sometimes they'll, they can't whoop properly, so it'll be like this.

• 19:25Alie Ward?

  Like a voice crack.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:26Alie Ward?

  Just like a 13-year-old boy in a choir.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:30Alie Ward?

  That's so cute.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  It's very sweet. So you can call them in. The nice thing about Spotted and Striped, and I'm sure for Artwolf too, but I'm not, I don't really know, is that they each have an individual pattern, like a fingerprint.

• 19:41Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 19:42Speaker 01

  That you can tell them apart.

• 19:44Alie Ward?

  From their fur?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, the spots or the stripes. Some programs, like the Spotted Hyena Program in the Masai Mara in Kenya, have been studying hyenas and their spot patterns and their social ranks and all sorts of other things about them for like, over 30 years. And so like, those research associates, they learn all the spot patterns and they just be like, "Oh, that's so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so." Just like, such a niche, wonderful skillset.

• 20:06Alie Ward?

  Yeah, to be able to recognize a hyena from a pattern at a distance.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:12Alie Ward?

  It's like, it's second nature. But have you ever gotten to go out and do field research?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:18Alie Ward?

  What is that like?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  So I work a lot on spotted hyenas and also spotted hyenas in relation to people and how we're interacting with each other. So I use a couple of different methods for my research on the hyenas. One is GPS collars to look at their movement at really fine scales. One is camera trapping. I also do a lot of community participatory work to like, understand more about how people are interacting with these animals. And so what does it look like to study hyenas? It depends. So I work in two protected areas, but one of them is also a livestock ranch that has like, 6,000 head of cattle, sheep, and goats, as well as being a conservancy.

• 20:56Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  And it's right across the street from a fully protected fenced national park. And so it's like a natural contrast. So there's hyenas in both, but they act very different from each other.

• 21:09Alie Ward?

  How?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Like, the ones in the conservancy used to be persecuted and also still get rightfully hazed away from the livestock. So they're very skittish of people.

• 21:18Alie Ward?

  So the ones in the conservancy, which is on privately-owned land, are more freaked out because they're used to getting yelled at for eating someone's goat.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Whereas the ones in the park, you can observe for longer periods of corpuscular time, so longer periods in the morning and evening, and not just at night because they're just chill and they haven't had that interaction with people. Oh, I also do observations. So like, if I find a den, I know that they like to come to those dens in the morning and in the evening. And they tend to congregate more there. So I might spend time at a den from like, right before dawn to like, an hour after dawn. And that's especially possible at a place like in the national park, where they put their dens kind of anywhere in the open versus the ones in the conservancy that will tend to, but not always, like, hide their dens or put them in places where I really have to work hard to get to them and have very hilarious field experiences trying to do that.

• 22:09Alie Ward?

  How do you find them? I mean, how do you get to them? Are you in a, some sort of ATV, or?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  No, because I value my limbs.

• 22:17Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, those things are death traps.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 22:20Alie Ward?

  Are you in a Land Rover situation?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  I wish I could afford a Land Rover.

• 22:24Alie Ward?

  I was gonna say, those seem also huge.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  I've had a recent come up, due to a bunch of donations, where I've moved from my Suzuki Samurai. Do you know those cars?

• 22:33Alie Ward?

  I love a Suzuki Samurai.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  They're so good for many things and so horrible for many things.

• 22:38Alie Ward?

  Yeah, they tip a lot, from what I understand?

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't tipped yet, but if I were able, if I were going to tip, I could probably lift it up, which is helpful.

• 22:47Alie Ward?

  They're so little and cute.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  They're little, if they fall in a hole, you'll be in the hole, which is a problem. But if like, there's mud, it's light enough for you to drive yourself out of it.

• 22:58Alie Ward?

  Golf cart with doors.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:00Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  And I can, I have very long arms, so I can reach everything in my car when I'm in the Samurai. So that's what I could afford in grad school. And now, we got a bunch of donations and we just got the project Toyota Hilux, like, for cedar truck, which will be helpful for lugging carcasses around and stuff.

• 23:15Alie Ward?

  What kind of carcasses? Hyena carcasses, or?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Like prey carcasses.

• 23:18Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  For catching hyenas, or for doing this carcass study that we're doing. The last time we were trying to catch hyenas, we were taking collars off of them because I couldn't afford the collars at the drop-offs. I still can't. But the, I was gifted hundreds of pounds of rotting cow meat because the fridges went off at the conservancy, which has livestock. Just by happenstance, it was awesome. I normally don't have bait. And I got all this cow meat, but we were in a, in my friends and colleagues' prado, which is an enclosed space. And that's where we stored it, in the 110-degree heat for five days. And it was very dusty, so like, often when we would drive around, we would close the windows. And it was like a, you know, glamorous field life that everyone thinks that I lead.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  I'm also, by the way, I don't eat meat, so.

• 24:07Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  But carcasses, honestly, like, the smell of a rotting carcass weirdly makes me hungry.

• 24:12Alie Ward?

  No, how is that?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  And I spend a lot of time at rotting carcasses, like, watching behavior.

• 24:17Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  And I'm just like, I don't understand why I'm so hungry all of a sudden. I'll be in the waft of rot and I'll be like, "I need to eat a snack" while you guys are eating a snack.

• 24:28Alie Ward?

  That is like, a whole separate field of neuroscience. Like, they need to put you in an MRI and pipe that in and figure out like, what part of your brain? Because it seems like it would be disgusting and repulsive, but, you know, we have a really big rotting warehouse in LA right now, the Fire. And I'm just thinking, like, there's so much.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  You think I should go sit next to it?

• 24:47Alie Ward?

  I was gonna say, like, it's such a shame that that's not being trucked around in a Hilux right now.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  I know.

• 24:52Alie Ward?

  You know? They would love that.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:55Alie Ward?

  And you mentioned that some of them, that they scavenge and they hunt. Do they have just really good senses of smell where they can catch a whiff?

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, they've got excellent smell. They also have excellent senses of hearing. They're able to also like, run sort of long distances for a long time, which is why they have that shape, by the way.

• 25:14Alie Ward?

  Really? Okay, because it's almost like their hips go down in the back?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:18Alie Ward?

  Right? Like a German shepherd?

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Let's look at the stuffing.

• 25:21Alie Ward?

  Dr. Wilkinson Brandish, a small stuffed animal hyena as a demonstration tool. Oh, I love you have a stuffing. They kind of look like those dogs with short spine syndrome. You know? Like, it absolutely, it goes up like a line graph. From the butt to the head. So why, are the back legs just straight up shorter?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yes, they are. They're shorter than the front legs. And so all of that shape lets them be more efficient at running long distances without running out of energy, basically.

• 25:52Alie Ward?

  So it's like a toe strike instead of a heel strike? Like, they strike with their front paws and then they catch up with the back a little bit?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So like, if you just compare them to something like a cheetah, that's like, very lithe, very skinny, very symmetrical. They're built for short-distance extreme bursts of speed, whereas these guys are more like endurance runners.

• 26:15Alie Ward?

  Speaking of endurance, Dr. Wilkinson has been studying applied ecology for nearly two decades, which is nearly two decades longer than I have known anything about a hyena. How did you get into it? If there's only a few dozen, really, in the world, how did you become a hyenadologist? Which is so cool. How did you fall into that niche?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. So I actually grew up in, in New York City, just spent my childhood in New York City. And I was really into all the animals that like, were able to live alongside us. So like, the rats, which I call our puppies, were like, my favorite thing.

• 26:52Alie Ward?

  I love, I love rats.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  They're so cute and so large. And like, I love, I liked the cockroaches, I liked the pigeons, I still love pigeons. And I was always sort of pretending like I had my own show about urban scrappy animals. And so I think I always had a sort of a thing for like, the common animal that takes what we throw at it and survives and or thrives anyway, just to start with. But then, how did I end up on hyenas? I ended up studying abroad in Kenya and Tanzania in college, in undergrad. Partially because I loved and was obsessed with wildlife. And partially because a, as a half-black person, I was like, "I would love to go somewhere where there are more black people and like, learn more about whatever."

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Like, I come from slave ancestry, so I didn't know where my people had come from. And then I did the DNA test later and it was like, everywhere, so anyway. Anyway, I went to Kenya and Tanzania, who knows if I'm from there, I don't know. And went there with this expectation of studying wildlife. And I was a really shy person growing up too, for most of my childhood. And that's like, another thing, I was like, using wildlife as an escape, I think. And really, like, not super into people at all. Which is like, very funny, listeners, I am the curator of community science.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So anyway, when I first went to Kenya and Tanzania, it was just a couple of weeks in when I was hearing from people like, listen, if a person kills a lion, the government will be here in two days to arrest that person. And if a lion kills a person, we may never see any acknowledgement or compensation. But that was what really tipped me off and was one of many catalysts that made me realize that like, I really need to be thinking about people and our relationships with wildlife and about communities. So that really catalyzed me to wanting to work on this issue of human wildlife conflict and coexistence and step away from just like being a wildlife nerd. So that's what galvanized like my desire to do a PhD was more like an applied reason. And like PhD gives you enough time and often will pay you if you teach or something,

• 28:55Speaker 01

  or if you get a fellowship. So you don't have to pay for yourself because I grew up pretty poor and didn't want to do a masters, which you have to pay for, blah, blah. So I wanted to do the PhD in a way that would be helpful to communities as well. Right? So we had a lot of anecdotal reports and like sort of social surveys that were like hyenas are causing the most trouble. But a lot of the money and a lot of the ecological surveys and like, or studies were about lions and leopards and like sort of the big pretty kitties of the, of the world and wolves and whatever. So I was kind of getting curious about hyenas. Like, why is it that we haven't studied how they interact with people very much? Like, really at all? And hyenas like have absolutely, I think they're one of

• 29:37Speaker 01

  the most polarizing animals in the world, almost equivalent, but not quite to coyotes, actually, which is why I studied coyotes as well.

• 29:43Alie Ward?

  Love them.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  But people like really hate spotted hyenas to some extent striped. Like brown isn't as volatile, but still not liked very much. And when you think about conflict and coexistence, you have to think about perceptions first. So that's kind of how I got into it.

• 29:58Alie Ward?

  When you talk about causing trouble, capital C, capital T, when they're causing trouble, does that mean they're eating someone's poodle? Does that mean they're taking out half a herd of cattle? Like their garbage cans are getting spilled over? What kind of trouble are we talking? Why are people so mad at them?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  People are mad at them for a lot of reasons. Okay. So people are mad at them for some justifiable reasons, as well as some that are more sort of myths and misconceptions.

• 30:25Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  One, they like to eat livestock if they can manage, like they are opportunistic hunters, scavengers, et cetera. They can hunt solo or in pairs or in a group, a big huge group. They can take down huge prey, like even African Cape buffalo. Oh, my God.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, like they can take them down. I mean, it's not easy, but like a huge group can come and do that. Clans can be, you know, up to 80, sometimes even larger. That's like pushing it. But like, they can be relatively large or they can be smaller. Right? So they can do damage. And if your livestock are not protected or spotted hyenas are also very intelligent, they can outperform chimpanzees on some problem solving tests.

• 31:25Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yes. Which is, the study that they did was at UC Berkeley, which is a whole other story. They had a hyena clan there.

• 31:32Alie Ward?

  At UC, oh.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  They had a hyena clan at UC Berkeley.

• 31:34Alie Ward?

  At UC Berkeley?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  At UC Berkeley, in the hills.

• 31:36Alie Ward?

  Where? In the hills?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, not just wandering around, but like at a facility.

• 31:42Alie Ward?

  At a facility in the hills?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, until 2013, for like a couple of decades.

• 31:46Alie Ward?

  No.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Because back in the day, you could just like take hyena cubs out of Kenya. Now I can't even take a piece of poop out of Kenya without like a million miles of paperwork. So I don't even try.

• 31:54Alie Ward?

  It seems like there would be a lot of NIMBYs also about that being like a whole, like a clan of hyenas. I used to live in the Bay Area. So I'm like, man, I never.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a good question. Like, I actually would love to look back at like news articles and things about that.

• 32:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah, no, I've, I've, trust me, there's going to be some microfiche happening in an aside over here. That's nuts.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:15Alie Ward?

  Let's just take a dip into the 2024 Berkeley Science Review article, Hyenas in the Hills: Exploring Berkeley's Unusual Field Station. So this is a 29 acre spot in the Northern California Berkeley Hills, and about 20 spotted hyenas, which were imported from Kenya, lived there for roughly 30 years. For decades, a wealth of valuable data about bone chomping and laughter and endocrinology emerged. But that wealth did run out and funding ceased in 2014. It forced the research to end. And then the hyenas had to be dispersed to various places, including Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida. They're like, I guess I'm gonna retire in Florida. Now, speaking of Disney, yes, animators visited this research

• 33:00Alie Ward?

  station to sketch and study the movements of hyenas. They promised scientists that these misunderstood little beasts would be portrayed in a good light. And then when the movie came out and hyenas were foot soldiers for a genocide, the hyenologists were like, wow, rat bastards, all of you. Why did you do that? So much so that one unnamed scientist related to the project tried to sue Disney for defamation. But hyenas are no match for the mouse. But the hyena community does agree that at least interest in hyenas has gotten a boost for decades. Who got the last laugh? Hyenas. Because the

• 33:41Alie Ward?

  researchers forgot to give a heads up to the animators that these captive UC Berkeley spotted hyenas had filed down canines. So the smiles of the hyenas in The Lion King are inaccurate. In reality, the giggles are far more pointed.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  So maybe one or two of them ended up at Oakland Zoo. They only live up to a couple of decades in the wild and maybe like a bit longer in captivity.

• 34:05Alie Ward?

  That's pretty good.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  If they're lucky, maybe 10 to 20 years in the wild.

• 34:09Alie Ward?

  It's pos. Okay. So they can take down water buffalo. They can take down maybe livestock?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  So yes, they can get into the livestock enclosure. They will try. And they have also, you know, attacked humans sometimes. There was a big thing in Nairobi, like outskirts of Nairobi, not too long ago, where like some college students or something were walking home at night on the edge of Nairobi National Park and got attacked.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  Tuesday, the Kenya Wildlife Service clarified that two people, including the student, were attacked by hyena. The statement adds that its personnel responded quickly and managed to take the injured to hospital. KWS in the statement added that they discovered partial remains of a human being killed at the scene. The family of the deceased has been notified. The KWS has asked people living near the area to be vigilant as it was an fenced animal corridor. It however says.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Which is sad, but still like, we live with these wildly apex predators sometimes.

• 35:14Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  They can also like get into sort of nuisance trouble. Near where I work in Kenya, someone had a hyena show up and like totally destroy their little hut store.

• 35:23Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like get in there because they are generalists. They can eat everything from elephants to caterpillars.

• 35:29Alie Ward?

  Oh, so if you've got some fruit in there, they're gonna be like yum, yum, yum.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  They could. I've definitely, there was someone I knew who had a hyena coming and like taking the maple syrup off the patio or something.

• 35:39Alie Ward?

  And you blame it. And you blame them.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  So they could be nuisances. Yeah. And there could be serious issues with like them sometimes attacking kids. But like, that's not their MO usually. But just like any behaviorally flexible animal, the individual's behavior can be different, individual by individual. And so like, you could end up with an animal that prefers to do this one behavior and then just keeps getting into trouble. Yeah.

• 36:03Alie Ward?

  Just a little rascal.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:05Alie Ward?

  When then Lion King. I'll be honest with you, I've never seen it.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  You've never seen The Lion King?

• 36:13Alie Ward?

  Never seen The Lion King. There is a whole lacuna. There is a whole empty spot of pop culture for me where I didn't have a TV for a little while. Cause I was always on like, I always had a deadline, which is very stupid. Never seen The Lion King. And I know I'm missing out. I will see it before this goes up. I did see it. I watched it. And yeah, it was brutal emotionally. And my friends Laurel and Catherine and your podmother, Jarrett, kept asking me for the first 40 minutes of the movie, you seriously haven't ever heard this song? You've not, you've, you've never seen this movie? And I was like, I haven't. But now I have. Two things stood out to me. Okay. The animators

• 36:54Alie Ward?

  clearly modeled Scar's hyena army after Hitler's. And I looked it up. Yes, the 1935 German propaganda film, The Triumph of the Will, was inspo. And it made me, I mean, this is an older movie. It made me feel really nostalgic for, you know, eras when our country promised to kill Nazis instead of like elect them. And also, side note, that imagery was eliminated in the 2019 live action version of the film because now the US is anti anti fascism, which should frighten you a little bit more than a hyena attack. Also, number two, never trust a shady uncle who tells you to keep things a secret. Good messages. But I know

• 37:36Alie Ward?

  that there are hyenas that are CT, they're causing trouble, I think, in there. There's Scar is a bad guy, I think, maybe the mean, it's like Hamlet, right?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Scar, but he's a lion.

• 37:49Alie Ward?

  He's a lion. I remember that. And then is the threat that because they make noises, people interpret as laughing, that they are talking shit on you?

• 38:02Alie Ward?

  Is that why people are threatened by hyenas?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  So, yes, some of the misconceptions and myths. Well, so there's some cultural aspects where like people are, associate them with witchcraft. Every now and then a hyena will do some grave digging, which doesn't help their reputation very much, but like bones be bones and they can digest them and their poop is often pure white from the calcium in the bones they digest.

• 38:23Alie Ward?

  Pretty metal.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  So they're really, I can get into public health benefits later because they do help us. Oh, they also, their genital, spotty genitalia really increases that witchcraft association and misconception about them that's just like, oh, that's too weird. I'm afraid of it. It also crushes bone, which like doesn't help its cause. They're the worst. Let's kill them all.

• 38:43Alie Ward?

  Do they laugh at people?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  They don't laugh at people, but so spotted hyenas, they are highly social. They have a bunch of different behaviors, including a bunch of different vocalizations that they do that mean different things. The laugh actually is more of an anxiety indicator.

• 38:58Alie Ward?

  Isn't it though, sometimes for, for everyone?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Right. Exactly. And there's like some excitement there for sure, but like typically when you're hearing a lot of those laughs, it's the excitement, yes, of being around a kill, but it's a little bit more because they have these, every single hyena is in a particular rank socially. They have an individual social rank, but if I'm a, a lower ranking hyena, eating a delicious cut of meat on a carcass and my higher ranking superior comes up to me to try and get that meat, I will sort of bare my teeth nervously, flick my tail up over my back in something we call bristle tail, and then laugh like, sorry, I'm getting out of here.

• 39:45Alie Ward?

  Oh my god. Really?

• 39:47Speaker 01

  So you hear it in like moments of high energy and excitement that are usually around these big resource items. That's when you'll hear it the most.

• 39:55Alie Ward?

  Oh my gosh.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  So it's more often like, oh.

• 39:58Alie Ward?

  I'm so sorry.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Don't worry, everything's fine.

• 40:01Alie Ward?

  That's so, okay, that's a revelation to me. And then what about those misconceptions in pop culture? Cause you think about hyenas, they're laughing at you, they're making a fool of you, they want to eat you. Again, Lion King.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Well, well, well, Banzai, what have we got here?

• 40:23Alie Ward?

  But do any pop cultural references get it right? Or is there one that's just the most egregious?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, honestly, Disney has the only, no, I guess, uh, what's her face with that pet hyena, which like never have a pet hyena also. That one superhero that's, she's like off her, off her head a little bit.

• 40:44Speaker 05

  Harley Quinn. Oh shit, is that a hyena in a bathtub? They named him Bruce after that hunky, whiny guy. He's my little dumpling, aren't you? I'm your little thing. Bruce, he was wandering around Chinatown. I guess it proves the theory that hyenas really do have nine lives.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  But anyway, that hyena was like a sidekick, which is cool, but like anytime a hyena's a pet in a film, I'm like, oh no.

• 41:10Alie Ward?

  Oh dear.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  But Disney has the monopoly for the most part on hyena content in pop culture and they really did the dirty in The Lion King, which the one thing they did get right was that there was a female leader.

• 41:22Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Because in most clans, at most points in time, all the females in the clan are ranked more highly than all the males for spotties because they have a matrilineal social structure, which means it passes from mama to cub. The youngest cub is the highest rank and the male cubs eventually immigrate out. And when you come into a new clan as a male, you are automatically the bottom of the totem pole. So there may be like temporary moments where there's a little male cub who's higher ranked, but he's going to leave at some point. And so most of the time females over males, which is kind of awesome.

• 41:53Alie Ward?

  And it's the younger cubs that are higher ranked?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:56Alie Ward?

  No.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  The youngest daughter of the highest ranking female in the clan is the highest ranking at the time.

• 42:03Alie Ward?

  No.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:04Alie Ward?

  Are you the youngest in your family?

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it kind of holds true for me. Are you?

• 42:09Alie Ward?

  Yep.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Youngest's are the best.

• 42:11Alie Ward?

  Youngest kid and, uh, daughter, so.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Same.

• 42:16Alie Ward?

  No wonder I love hyenas. Okay, I have a million questions from listeners and I've been waiting to get to the pseudo penis. Dr. Wilkinson gestures to the stuffy in her hand.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, this one is not accurate.

• 42:28Alie Ward?

  Is that, is that supposed to, oh, there's no penis at all. They did a Barbie on it.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:34Alie Ward?

  No Jennies to speak of.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:37Alie Ward?

  Do you think that when designing this stuffed animal, they had to sit around a conference table and say, we gotta give it some kind of looking dick. What are we gonna do?

• 42:45Speaker 01

  I feel like if this was like a Bark Box toy, they would do, they would actually give it the dick, but as it is, I think Wild Republic does not give anything genitalia.

• 42:55Alie Ward?

  It's a disservice to the narrative, but we'll talk about it. Okay. And talk about it, we will in just a moment, but we're going to take a quick break to donate to a charity of choice. And this week we're doing a double donation, one to the beloved Los Angeles County Natural History Museum to support specifically Black Momologists Week, which provides opportunities for current and aspiring Black Momologists across the diaspora to form conscious fruitful connections in addition to illuminating historical and present day Black contributions in the field of momology. And they say, "In our ideal future, young Black people of all backgrounds will realize that they are not only welcome, but needed and vital to the future of this field." Love Black Momologists Week. And this year they're holding an in-person event at the Natural History Museum in LA

• 43:40Alie Ward?

  on October 16th. So go to blackmamologists.com. You just see the link in the show notes for more details, including, they also have a Black and Indigenous Scholars in Momology Award, and the application for that is on their website too. And we're also donating to El El Na Alak, which is providing essential aid to families across Gaza, including clean water, food, and basic hygiene supplies. They're supporting people in critical need with dignity and humanity. And you can find out more about El El Na Alak also at the link in our show notes. They say, "This is what solidarity looks like when the world turns its back." Thank you so much to Dr. Wilkinson for choosing those and thank you to sponsors of the show for making our weekly donations possible.

• 44:24Alie Ward?

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• 45:09Alie Ward?

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• 45:50Alie Ward?

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• 46:35Alie Ward?

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• 47:18Alie Ward?

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• 47:59Alie Ward?

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• 48:51Alie Ward?

  Okay, so let's get to your questions, patrons. You too can join at patreon.com/ologies. It's a dollar a month. You can submit questions ahead of time. We ask as many as we can. So many good ones in this one, like 30 of you asked, such as, Erin Ryan and Ketra wanted to know, Erin from Vancouver.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  Hey, this is Erin Ryan from Vancouver, Canada. You gotta talk about the female pseudo penis situation.

• 49:16Alie Ward?

  Ketra says,

• 49:17Speaker 02

  What the heck is up with hyenas' sexual parts? It's so weird. Please explain.

• 49:25Alie Ward?

  So many people wanted to know. And it's matrilineal, which is wonderful. That's gotta tie in with the junk.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there, should I tell you about the what or the why first?

• 49:38Alie Ward?

  Talk about the what.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Okay, let's start with the what.

• 49:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah, paint a picture.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  So spotted hyenas, and this is only true for spotted hyenas, not the other three species. The females have what has been historically called a pseudo phallus, because the people who came up with that term were white men who were scared to say clitoris, which is what that is.

• 49:57Alie Ward?

  Amazing. So they say what it's not in relation to males?

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the spotted hyena's clitoris is the same length and size as the male's penis.

• 50:11Alie Ward?

  Love.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  It gets erect and soft, like a male's penis does.

• 50:15Alie Ward?

  Love.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  And here's the kicker. They have sex, pee, and give birth through their clitoris.

• 50:20Alie Ward?

  No.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:22Alie Ward?

  No. How are they having sex through it?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so they have to make it soft and sort of retract it.

• 50:30Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  And then it's very awkward. The female has all the control, as you might imagine, when you're pushing a rope into another rope.

• 50:37Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  But it involves a lot of acrobatics. But it essentially is the same thing, except like, instead of mounting the female in a way you might expect in a mammal, it's like, sort of like a half-mount, dig underneath kind of vibe.

• 50:50Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 50:51Alie Ward?

  Male on the bottom?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Male, male is like,

• 50:54Alie Ward?

  Male on the top?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Male is mounting after a fashion, but like, definitely like, has a little bit more acrobatics to do. Maybe has good ab muscles, I don't know. But yeah, the female sort of retracts it all.

• 51:07Alie Ward?

  Gotta get a strong core.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:08Alie Ward?

  You need a strong core for that. I'd like you to know a few more dinner party facts about specifically spotted hyena peni. First, female so-called pseudo phalluses are thicker than the boys. They have a more rounded tip, and they also feature small spines on the head, making them feel like soft sandpaper, report researchers who have felt the tip of a giant hyena clit. Now, getting a boner as a woman hyena, it's not a flex. In fact, according to the banger of a paper in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, titled "The Erect Penis Is a Flag of Submission in Female-Dominated Society: Greetings in Serengeti Spotted Hyenas." Females will greet each other, they'll lift a hind leg for just a lady dick inspection,

• 51:53Alie Ward?

  and those who stay soft are the dominant ones. It's like doing a math problem as a seventh grader. Just a hard one in front of the entire pack is a sign of submissive embarrassment, if I can project emotionally. Now, sometimes if reacquainting, two females may get into a bit of a tussle, and they'll bite each other's seven-inch donks, doing lasting reproductive harm. In case it had never crossed your mind or your crotch, human penises and clitorises come from the same tissue. It's called a genital tubercle, and it's influenced by hormones. So it kind of decides the trajectory. And we have a great two-part neuroendocrinology episode with Dr. Daniel Fau that talks all about that, and gender, and intersex anatomy, and so many other wonderful things. We'll link in the show notes.

• 52:38Alie Ward?

  But yeah, a clit is more than meets the eye. If you're a human being, you got a nubbin at the top of the wishbone, and then bulbs that kind of grace your vulva like underground arms. Yeah, we do need a whole episode on that. We'll work on it, but for now. Okay, wait. So in a human, the clit is kind of like a wishbone.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 53:00Alie Ward?

  Did this just form out around the vagina and urethra like a tube sock, kind of?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think the spotted hyena is the only species to have its vagina fully enclosed in its clitoris.

• 53:14Alie Ward?

  How about that?

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is like, I can go on, because if you think too hard about that, you're like, holy hell.

• 53:21Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Right? In fact, having to exit a clitoris on your way out

• 53:26Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  is not easy for either the cub or the mother.

• 53:29Alie Ward?

  I'm sure. Can it widen to accommodate? It has to.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a stretchy skin, right? Because it, you know, it becomes engorged and all of that stuff, good stuff that stretchy skin does. But a few things happen because of needing to traverse a canal that's not quite meant for a cub. So there's, I forget the percentage of first-time cubs that die, but like, there's a chunk of them. It's estimated, I think, around 60%.

• 53:58Alie Ward?

  Do they have one at a time, or do they have like six in a litter?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  They can have up to two.

• 54:02Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Unlike the other hyenas, they only have two nipples.

• 54:06Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Pretty sure that the other ones have more nipples than that.

• 54:10Alie Ward?

  Wow, so they're just rocking, okay, so maybe twins, if that.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not, I think it's not uncommon for one of them to kill the other at some point, syblicide. And then I think during the first-time birth, there's like 20% estimated of first-time moms could die in birth.

• 54:28Alie Ward?

  Oh, dear.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  And the other thing that happens is, like, it's pretty much guaranteed that that clitoris is gonna tear during the first ever birth. Yeah, which is helpful for telling them apart from the males later on.

• 54:39Alie Ward?

  Oh, really?

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Because there's a pink scar that runs along the clitoris if you are a female who has given birth.

• 54:45Alie Ward?

  Okay, how do the sizes impact rank? Not at all, or somewhat?

• 54:54Speaker 01

  The sizes don't impact rank, but the females tend to be bigger than the males.

• 55:00Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  But also, when you're higher ranked, you get better cuts of meat, and you have to take less risks and go less far to access those better cuts of meat.

• 55:09Alie Ward?

  Do they have any idea from the evolutionary biology standpoint, or the ethology standpoint, you know, why it is a matriarchy?

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Well, I like to distinguish between matriarchy and matrilineal.

• 55:22Alie Ward?

  Oh, okay. So matriarchy is when females are in power. And Dr. Wilkinson says that matriarchy in elephant societies, say, refers to a single female leader, whereas matrilineal is a transfer of power from mothers to their offspring, kind of like inherited wealth versus power. So you can be rich without being in politics, and you can be in politics without being rich, but...

• 55:48Speaker 01

  There's elephants that are matriarchal, and maybe also matrilineal cetaceans. Yeah, have a lot of like, female girl power in them.

• 55:56Alie Ward?

  Do you think that's why they get paired in with witchcraft? Do you think it's just straight up, like, femmeophobia?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Honestly, I don't even think so, because people didn't, people don't even understand that they're females necessarily when they see them.

• 56:11Alie Ward?

  Yeah. You gotta get up really close, I imagine.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  There are ways to tell them apart, which I can, oh wait, should I say the theories about why the clitoris exists? Or should I say that ways to tell the males and females apart?

• 56:22Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 56:25Alie Ward?

  Tell me why, tell me why the clit?

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Okay, we don't know.

• 56:28Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  But there are theories. First is they use their clitoris, and also the penis, erect as part of their greeting ceremonies. They talk to each other about social rank and all sorts of other communication. And like, they lift their legs and like sniff each other and stuff like that. There's an element of like, maybe they evolved these partially as a way to defend against, or be more formidable against males in a couple of ways, like they control all of the sexual encounters.

• 56:53Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  And then there's also like, there's a, it could be a byproduct of females getting that dominant advantage, because there's tons and tons of androgens that the fetuses are exposed to in the womb, like way more than your average mammal is exposed to in the womb. And like, are they getting these long clitorises because of all the androgens they're exposed to in the womb, which are a factor of like, the territoriality and aggression that the moms, also all hyenas show, but the moms show as part of their social rank especially. The cubs are also, like, they come out very formidable. Like, they have some teeth already. Their eyes are open, they're ready to rock and roll, which is very unusual in a mammal. Typically, they'll come out like, eyes closed, helpless. So like, the cubs are ready to go.

• 57:36Alie Ward?

  Oh, and so, okay, big clit. It, does it, can they come? What's up? Do they know if they're having orgasms with that?

• 57:45Speaker 01

  I feel like we can't even, we haven't even studied enough about hyena basic ecology

• 57:50Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  for us to get to the orgasm.

• 57:53Alie Ward?

  There's very little research in humans, so, who knows? I just wasn't sure if that's like, I don't know, I'll look, I'll see if there's anything on it, but I'm gonna guess it's probably a big question mark.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  I would put money on it being a question mark, but I sure hope I'm wrong.

• 58:08Alie Ward?

  Correct. I could find nothing on if a female spotted hyena experiences spasms of sexual pleasure. But a 2011 New York Times article, "How Spotted Hyenas Mate", detailed some observations from the UC Berkeley Hyena Commune, and said that females don't mate with their hometown spotted hyenas. They prefer immigrants to the clan. They want a fresh bombshell in the villa. Also, because getting it on is so acrobatic and difficult, sexual coercion is impossible in hyena society, at least spotted hyenas. So let's talk a little bit about that. Let's set the scene. So this article explains that a female spotty will shove that ass in the air,

• 58:49Alie Ward?

  and she'll put her head on the ground to signal, "I'm not gonna bite you if we fuck." And one observation at Berkeley details failed mount attempts. It says, "The male veered off at the last second as if he was simply overcome by nervousness." And it explains that even though the female's organ is flaccid during the copulation, its only opening does point forward and downward. So the male must, quote, "hop around behind the female while he squats behind her, thrusting blindly upward and backward to achieve this intromission." And it notes, "It's actually very comical." Also, spotted hyenas will go find a little far-off secluded place to do that dirty,

• 59:35Alie Ward?

  and not because they're shy or they lack an exhibitionist kink, but because after mating, they can be stuck together for minutes at a time, and they could get absolutely wrecked by a predator in that post-coital dick tangle. Sometimes, the man hyena will spend that time grooming his lover's neck, as if to say,

• 59:57Alie Ward?

  Hey, that was awkward, but it was really nice. In a 2020 paper in the Journal of Endocrinology titled Spotted Hyenas and the Sexual Spectrum: Reproductive Endocrinology and Development notes that the study of the spotted hyena, quote, "forces a reevaluation of how we define masculine versus feminine sexual characteristics." And I like that.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  I feel like if conservatives found out about a funded research project, just hyena orgasm, like, we would be in big trouble in science. I mean, we already are, but.

• 1:00:27Alie Ward?

  Maybe they could learn something from it.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Okay, how to tell males and females apart, I was gonna say, because I find this to be important, which like, nobody else does. So, there are a few ways, and some of them are easier than others, but all of them are hard.

• 1:00:40Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  The female's erect clitoris actually has a more blunt end than the male's erect penis.

• 1:00:48Alie Ward?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  So, if you're looking at the tips, then look for that.

• 1:00:53Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Because, you know, you need a point to get in. The female, once she's given birth, has a pink scar on her clitoris, as I mentioned. Also, once she's given birth, her two little teats distend, and you can try to catch a glimpse of those, and that's pretty distinctive. Fun fact, while we're talking about telling them apart, some might ask, "Why can't you just tell them apart because the male has testicles?" And the answer is, the female has a pseudoscrotum as well.

• 1:01:21Alie Ward?

  Stop it.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Alie Ward?

  Are you kidding me?

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  I kid you not. And in fact, I have had to teach, when we've had a hyena in hand, I taught my old vet, when I first started doing this work, that we actually had a female who hadn't given birth, because you squeeze the pseudoscrotum, and there's nothing in there. It's just a sack of flesh, which like, could be tied to the androgens I was talking about earlier, for instance, but we don't know.

• 1:01:45Alie Ward?

  Just drag kings.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:01:47Alie Ward?

  Love.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  They're amazing.

• 1:01:50Alie Ward?

  Hyenologists also look for a little bulge in the abdomen that might hint at a dropped uterus, but it's hard to tell if it's just a tummy full of water buffalo meat in there. Like, everyone looks pregnant on Thanksgiving.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:06Alie Ward?

  Um, okay, Tyler Banks, first time question asker, "Do they groom each other, and do they play?"

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Yes and yes. Well, spotties do, and I'm pretty sure the other ones do as well. Everybody grooms, for sure.

• 1:02:16Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  They are, as I'll remind you, feliforms, so they have some cat-like traits. And play is a huge part of sociality, so I would put money on brown hyenas also playing, maybe striped, but spotties definitely play. I watch them play. It's very sweet.

• 1:02:29Alie Ward?

  What do they do?

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  They'll like, roll around with each other, or like, snap at each other, and do sort of violent-looking, cute things.

• 1:02:36Alie Ward?

  LP wanted to know, hypothetically speaking, if a hyena was sitting on my kitchen counter, would it be inclined to knock cups and salt shakers on the floor?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  It might be inclined to eat you.

• 1:02:46Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  While it's.

• 1:02:48Alie Ward?

  Crush your bones.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Knock the things on the floor.

• 1:02:51Alie Ward?

  Rachel B., first time question asker, wanted to know if they really eat shoes. So, do they have dog-like or cat-like behaviors if you were? I mean, they have hyena-like behaviors, but do they tend to be more cat-like?

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  No. I've watched a hyena, a young hyena, squeeze through the tiniest hole in a fence that I'm sure a cannon would not be able to get through, and I was like, "Oh, you just reminded me that you're a feliform." Like, you just made yourself into liquid for a second. But I don't think that's common.

• 1:03:19Alie Ward?

  Yeah, just great. I can't imagine a dog doing that. Han the Bee, Patty, and Ara Victor wanted to know about scent marking, and Han the Bee says, "I once heard that hyenas mark territory by what sounded like taking part of their insides and turning it outside. Ara Victor said, 'My girlfriend just told me they can turn their buttholes inside out.' Is that true? Why? Nature is so beautiful."

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Yes. Don't we all wish we could turn our buttholes inside out?

• 1:03:43Alie Ward?

  Don't we?

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  To mark our territory.

• 1:03:44Alie Ward?

  If only. You're like those someone sitting there.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Simply safe.

• 1:03:49Alie Ward?

  Sponsored to you by buttholes. Yeah, it would definitely be helpful in the movies when your friends are out getting popcorn, and you need to save their seeds.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. They do. They evert, so they have a scent glands. I think all four hyena species have the scent glands that they use to mark their territory. They'll do this very dainty, I mean, they'll do it anywhere, but like, I've seen spotties do like, a very dainty little like, "Let me just put this right here on this blade of grass," and like, evert their butt a bit, and get that scent paste out.

• 1:04:17Alie Ward?

  Oof.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  I was gonna say something. Oh, about eating shoes, they do try to chew on my tire sometimes.

• 1:04:22Alie Ward?

  If they can crush bones, they can crush a Suzuki Samurai tire, right?

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I have some evasive maneuvers that I try to do in those moments. But it is very cute. It's usually the cubs that try to do it.

• 1:04:34Alie Ward?

  Little babies. Well, I don't know if they could digest them, but Hallie Bogusa, Caroline Baxter, Mark Rubin, Megan Ratcliffe, Creme de la Creme, Britt Klein, Louis H., Clara Punt, wanted to know, Louis H. said, "Do hyenas have particular microbes in their gut that let them digest all this stuff they eat, such as bones?" Britt Klein wanted to know if you've seen them eat anything really weird. But yeah, how are they digesting all them bones?

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  I mean, their, their tummies are super acidic. They also like, again, they can crush the bones pretty well with their teeth. I think 1,100 PSI-ish for the spotted, which is, I think, the largest bite force of a terrestrial mammal. Not a mammal, because like, think about an orca, probably a lot more PSI, I'd say.

• 1:05:21Alie Ward?

  Oof.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  So they have acidic tummies. They also like, they're disease endpoints in a lot of cases as well. I think the military was trying to study that for a minute, try and like, use it for evil, but they couldn't figure it out. But like, they produce a lot of antibodies for things very quickly, even in their saliva. So they are like, one of the only species known to routinely like, be an endpoint for rabies, for instance.

• 1:05:40Alie Ward?

  Oh my god. So they're like, "How can we inoculate ourselves against bio-warfare we inflict on other people?" What do the hyenas do?

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Alie Ward?

  Was it that kind of stuff?

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it pretty much was. They were studying their blood for a minute.

• 1:05:51Alie Ward?

  I don't trust it.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was weird. I'm like, "And then, and then what?"

• 1:05:55Alie Ward?

  Yeah. What, to what end, really? In terms of habitat, Megan Bacon, Nikki G., Marla J., Mel S., and Bug in a Rug wanted to know, well, Nikki G. asked if elephant graveyards make for adequate environments for hyenas, but you mentioned their dens, and knowing that they can be like, 80, a clan can have 80, like, where are they living?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I should have made that clear. First of all, never been to an elephant graveyard. Whoa.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  It's really creepy, yeah. Elephants are extirpated from where I've worked the past decade. I have seen elephants, but never a graveyard. Would I think that that's a good place for a hyena? I feel like they might want more food and shelter than a graveyard could provide.

• 1:06:42Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  But, I don't know. Hyenas are very adaptable, and they can like, live in cities, so that's sure. That's a great habitat for them, because anywhere is, it seems.

• 1:06:50Alie Ward?

  Heads up, elephant graveyards don't exist, as far as scientists know. So make sure to ruin that for everyone you know, because the world deserves the truth. Do they dig a burrow?

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  So they can dig burrows out, but they also often will reuse old burrows from like, things like warthogs and things like that. Usually, where I work in the savannas, you'll see warthogs and hyenas in the same sort of habitat. And it's really annoying. I'll get back to the dens in a second. It's really annoying, because this is a very niche fact, but a warthog is a ruter, right? They root through the, they put their little knees down, and they root through the soil to get stuff.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  And when their butts are in the air, and their heads are close to the ground, it looks, from a distance, again, I wear glasses, almost equivalent to when a hyena is sitting down.

• 1:07:47Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm, so I'm like, "Is that a hyena sitting down, or a warthog's butt?" It's a warthog's butt. Got it.

• 1:07:55Alie Ward?

  It's such a specific problem to have.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so specific. Anyway, so the dens, they don't all live in the den. The den is meant for cubs, so there's usually two, at least two dens at any given time. There's the natal den, where the females, who are gonna give birth, go to give birth and have the little tiny yin beans, as I call them. I call them all beans.

• 1:08:13Alie Ward?

  Beans?

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  And yins is hyenas.

• 1:08:15Alie Ward?

  Yins beans. Oh, my god, adorable.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  I love them. And they'll stay there for, you know, a certain period of time, and then move over to the familial den, which is the one that like, kind of the communal den that everybody's kind of gathered at, at the morning and the evening, and sometimes other times throughout the day or night. But the cubs hang out in there when everybody is off doing stuff.

• 1:08:36Alie Ward?

  What's the capacity? What's the head count inside one of those familial dens?

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  I mean, it depends. I've seen a den that's very small, and I've seen dens that are intended for a clan of like, 65 hyenas, that like, maybe will have anywhere between two and like, nine cubs at a time, right? So it's super dependent, like, the dens can be different sizes. It's infuriating when you're looking for them without having any clue where they are.

• 1:09:01Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Sometimes I can sniff them out, which is kind of fun. Hyenas have a very musky smell. I mean, sometimes they have a very rotting flesh smell, but like, musky smell, like, I knew where a den was, sort of, but it was in a very dense forest. And I drove my little Suzuki in there, and like, scratched it to pieces. And I sort of got out of the car, and I have a witness to this, so like, I'm not crazy. Got out of the car, and I was like, "Where is it?" Like, it's, it was just so dense. And I started to smell, I like, sniffed them out, and I found it. There might even be a video of me finding the den by sniffing.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Getting closer, getting closer.

• 1:09:35Alie Ward?

  On that note, I thought this was a great question. Rachel B., first time question asker, hypothetically speaking, smiley face, "If a camper were on her period, and a pack of hyenas came sniffing around the grounds, what's the likelihood she'd get dragged away as a hyena snack delight?" And Goblin Prince, Naomi, first time question asker, Empress of Smallwood, Addie Capello, Earl of Gremlin, Lila Likes Bugs, and Jenna Congdon wanted to know, "Will they eat you?" Jenna says, "Would they like scritches?" Are they mean and scary as they're made out to be, or are they nice little weirdos with bad PR? So, can they sniff you out, and perhaps devour your bones? Are they gonna kill you?

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  They can definitely kill you, but your average hyena is gonna be like, a little bit more wary of trying to get into a tent or something like that.

• 1:10:24Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  To like, actively come get you. Like, they're gonna be more likely to raid your trash in the campground for your used tampons, or whatever it is.

• 1:10:31Alie Ward?

  Would that be delicious for them? Probably?

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 1:10:34Alie Ward?

  Right?

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Alie Ward?

  I guess so.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  Why not? My dog used to eat those.

• 1:10:37Alie Ward?

  I mean.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  It's absolutely disgusting.

• 1:10:39Alie Ward?

  Blood is blood is blood. Like, I guess, like a sponge of barbecue sauce.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. No.

• 1:10:45Alie Ward?

  Ooh.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  So yeah, but like, you know, I wouldn't sleep with your tent open in general, whether or not you're bleeding, because like, there have been cases where they just like, were like, "Oh, look, an arm," and like, ripped it off and walked away.

• 1:10:57Alie Ward?

  What?

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  If, because these people fell asleep with their, the first halves of their bodies out of their tent, looking at the stars or something like that.

• 1:11:04Alie Ward?

  And just grabbed a limb and ran?

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're opportunistic. The answer to, are they cute little misunderstood weirdos? Or are they dangerous? Is like, yes. The answer is yes.

• 1:11:14Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Like, they're not out to get you, but they're an opportunistic apex predator.

• 1:11:19Alie Ward?

  Yeah, and you're in their territory.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Alie Ward?

  Wandering around or in like a, a final tent.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, we need to like build a culture of coexistence where like we do smart things.

• 1:11:29Alie Ward?

  Well, okay. Valerie Bertha Sedony asks, Addie Capello, Curtis Dog, Ariel Van Sant, Erin Duberry, Villany, Grace Conroy, Quill Sloan, Leanne Odenger, Pavka34, Megan Ratcliffe, and Jacob Morve wanted to know, in Jacob's words, "My entire perspective on hyenas comes from The Lion King. Assuming they don't sound like Whoopi Goldberg, what does the movie get right and wrong?" A lot of people want to know, how accurate are the hyenas in The Lion King? Are they mischievous?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  So they can be mischievous because they're very clever and very intelligent. Their only accuracy really, though, was that the females were leading them. The female hyena, that was good.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  The rest of it is like, there was a lot of implications about them being dirty scavengers with like their apex predators and they do compete. Like, the movie was written by a lion, honestly.

• 1:12:23Alie Ward?

  Clearly, clearly.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  They compete with lions.

• 1:12:27Alie Ward?

  Lion's uncle was a producer.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Let's make it this way. And they kill up to 70 or even more percent of their own prey. Lions in some settings have been more likely to steal hyena kills than the other way around. And the other thing about hyenas is like, they help us. Like, they help the ecosystem. They are an ecosystem cleaner. They can digest bone, they can clean it all up. There's been one study estimating, from Ethiopia, estimating what would happen if you removed hyenas from the landscape. And they basically estimated that like, there would be a ton more disease for both livestock and people, and a ton more money going into trying to mitigate that disease.

• 1:13:20Alie Ward?

  Especially if they're an endpoint. What are they, what's it called?

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  A disease endpoint for a lot of diseases that we know of so far.

• 1:13:27Alie Ward?

  So, again, done dirty, right? Oh, let's cram in another from No Rab and first time question asker Naomi. From whom's do they watch their backs? Do they have predators? Who's eaten hyenas?

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, lions and hyenas will fight, but the cubs can be eaten by all sorts of things, right? Like, little beans, especially when they're the little tiny ones. People are the main threat for most, if not all four hyena species, like getting hit by cars, getting killed through poisoning, burning out the dens, et cetera.

• 1:13:57Alie Ward?

  Yeah, just meanies. Comet Omelet, first time question asker, says, "I have questions about arid wolves. First off, why so cute? And how do they not mind having their tongues bitten by termites all day and night? Do they get nibbled by their prey?"

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  I think that termites have the ability to like let out acid or something, like something very chemical about a termite.

• 1:14:22Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  That's involved in their defense. And the tongue of an, of arid wolves has evolved a defense mechanism against that defense. So like, I don't think they feel it, or otherwise they'd be feeling it 300,000 times.

• 1:14:34Alie Ward?

  I know you're not going to sleep until I tell you about the 1994 article in the Journal of Vomology titled, "Tolerance of Arid Wolves to Defense Secretions of Trinervatermas, Trinervoides", which are termites. And it says that, yeah, termites are over 90% of the diet of arid wolves in South Africa. And curious as to how they could even deal. Scientists collected, liquidized in oil, and then added in different concentrations, this termite slurry to the diets of captive arid wolves, African civets, and bat-eared foxes. Sort of like an episode of Top Chef, with each of them being a judge. And the judges' reactions were, the foxes refused to even eat the termite mixture. They were like, get it out of here, this is crapola.

• 1:15:18Alie Ward?

  But civets were like, it's not my fave, but I'd eat it. And arid wolves tolerated the highest concentrations. They were like, bravo, give these nerds the prize. And the termite chef scientists concluded that the ancestors of arid wolves and relatives of civets adapted to tolerate noxious chemicals and hence the defense secretions of these delicious termites. Maybe they love it, though. You know, I just did a hot sauce episode, some people love it. And that just hurts. So who knows? Okay, last listener question, Holland G. and Lila Likes Bugs, want to know, Lila or Lila, says, "Can I love them? And more importantly, can I help them? And Holland G. wants to know, how are they doing conservation-wise?"

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Okay, can you love them? Yes, love them today. Permission granted.

• 1:16:08Alie Ward?

  Done.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Can you help them? Yes, there are a lot of ways you can help them. I would say there are ways to donate to organizations that are doing broader coexistence efforts. Sometimes they're focused on lions, but they still help hyenas when there's like not a lion being poisoned or something being poisoned that they want a lion to die from. You can continue to spread the word. I have been giving spotted hyena stuffies to children for the past decade to try and plant seeds of joy and love and care for the animals and fight misconceptions about them.

• 1:16:39Alie Ward?

  So what is the hardest part about studying them? Is it getting up in the middle of the night so you can be there by dawn? Is it field work?

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, honestly, sometimes, so I work with people and spotted hyenas, so I work at night and during the day. So like, that's a big difficulty. I get very tired. There's also some mornings where like, I need to get up and go at like 3:30 or 4:00.

• 1:17:02Alie Ward?

  Oh, God.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  So that's hard, but like, sometimes there's like buffalo outside of my house and I can't do field work that morning, because I'll die trying to get out. But honestly, the hardest part is like working with people who are struggling with hyenas or who hate them.

• 1:17:17Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  It's kind of the most rewarding part and the most fun while being the hardest. But like, I've had a lot of great success stories around it, too. We started calling ourselves, are, am I allowed to curse on this podcast?

• 1:17:28Alie Ward?

  Of course.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Okay, so we started calling my team in my PhD, I worked with two Kenyan master students, Christine and Gerald, and we were calling ourselves Team Mafisi, which Mafisi means hyenas in Swahili, but it's become a little bit of a curse word as well.

• 1:17:46Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  That means like fuckboys, basically. And so like, I knew that, I speak Swahili, I also knew about that term and I knew that like how negative it was. And I was like, y'all, we're going to reclaim Mafisi. And so we started calling ourselves that. And at first, people would laugh when we'd meet like rangers or whatever, and they'd be like, huh, you don't know what that means. And I'm like, I know exactly what it means. We're reclaiming it. And now, people have come on board, calling themselves Team Mafisi.

• 1:18:14Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  And when I get out of the Suzuki, there's a crowd of people there that are like, Team Mafisi!

• 1:18:20Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  I was so surprised.

• 1:18:24Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's so sweet. You're a legend.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so people like, you know, I'm not saying like there's some sea change in how people are viewing hyenas, but there's like these little bits of just like using comedy and using connection and being authentic that like maybe move the needle in these tiny ways. That's been really nice to see. And I'm still a shy guy in there somewhere, but like the muscle has been worked enough that like feels less daunting and more like, how do I connect authentically with people?

• 1:18:54Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Alie Ward?

  I mean, you're, you're such a good voice for hyenas and in general for scrappy wildlife. I know that's your website, too, right?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Uh, Scrappy Naturalist.

• 1:19:05Alie Ward?

  Scrappy, Scrappy Naturalist. What is it that you love the most about, about what you do, out of everything, you know?

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Gosh, I love how you never know what the next day will bring to you.

• 1:19:20Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  How you can always let people surprise you and the wildlife surprise you. I like how diverse my days are, like everything from working with people to putting a collar on a coyote or a hyena, to doing a TV show or something. You know, like, I'm writing a children's book that's about misunderstood animals, scrappy animals, that'll come out in spring 2020. Like, I can do all of those things as part of my job at the museum, which is part of why I like museums.

• 1:19:45Alie Ward?

  Yeah. That there's so much science going on, but there also is so much public interaction. It's so funny that there are so few people in the world studying hyenas that now we like, now we're like friends with one. Now, everyone who listens to this is like, yeah, Dr. Wilkinson.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  Hopefully, there will be more and more and more.

• 1:20:03Alie Ward?

  I love hyenas now.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:20:05Alie Ward?

  I like, thought they were cool, but now I love them.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  They're amazing. Yeah.

• 1:20:10Alie Ward?

  You're the best.

• 1:20:14Alie Ward?

  So ask learned people absurdist questions, because hyenas, they deserve to be known, and now we know them. You can know more about Dr. Christine Wilkinson via scrappynaturalist.com. And you can follow socials at the links in the show notes. We have many more links to research and videos up at aliward.com/ologies/hyenaedology. It's linked in the show notes as well. We are at Ologies on Instagram and Blue Sky. I'm at Ali Ward at both. We have shorter, kid-friendly episodes that are available in their own feed, no swears, wherever you find podcasts, just search Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, and subscribe there. We have Ologies merch available at ologiesmerch.com. And to submit questions ahead of time, you can join the Patreon at patreon.com/ologies

• 1:20:59Alie Ward?

  for as little as one hot dollar a month. Erin Talbert, love her, Admins Eology's podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwire does the website. Our scheduling producer is Noel Dilworth. Managing director is Susan Hale. Jake Chaffee edits. Lead editor is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn made the theme music. And if you stick around to the very end, you know, I may tell you a secret. This week, except for recently, for a few weeks, I was really concerned, I was super worried. I have a 14-year-old daughter named Grammy. She's a dog, and I have been really worried that she has diabetes because she's older and she smelled very sweet, like sugar or like maple syrup. I was worried that maybe she was passing some glucose in her urine.

• 1:21:44Alie Ward?

  All of her blood work came back fine, and the smell persisted. She still smelled like sugar. We thought maybe it was like a shrub that she was brushing up against on our walks. And then it went away, which is good. And then it came back months later, and I realized that the smell was my Banana Boat lip balm. And she smelled like it because I kiss her head a lot. And when I wore the lip balm, there you go, she smelled delicious. Mystery solved. My worries melted away like honey. My beloved beast is just fine. I propose that you propose a toast to hyenas, though, at your next party. Pick a fact, any fact, to share. There's so many, but two hyenas. Bye-bye.

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  And we deserve some respect. Want more cash? You can get a $450 bonus after your first 45 deliveries with Uber Eats. That's $450 on top of your earnings. Yes, really. So sign up and start delivering with Uber Eats. Complete within 14 days of signup and 11/1. Terms apply. See after details.

• 1:23:11Speaker 04

  Oh, look. You just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting and then another meeting. Hit your booking point? Book with Southwest and enter airplane mode.