Striped Hyena

Striped Hyena battle analysis

The striped hyena is the most widespread and least understood of the bone-cracking hyenas. A mature male weighs around 38 kg, stands about 72 cm at the shoulder and has the family's sloping back, big pointed ears and a coat of grey or beige barred with black stripes. Along its spine runs a long mane that it raises when threatened, suddenly looking far larger than it is.

It spends the night walking. Serengeti animals covered up to 27 km in a night at a steady 2–4 km/h, checking bushes, holes and tree bases, remembering where fruit trees and rubbish dumps are and caching what they cannot eat. It follows wolves and big cats to their kills, and its massive premolars and powerful jaw muscles let it finish bones, hooves and tortoise shells that the killers leave behind.

In a fight it relies on that bite and on its nerve. It can kill a dog with a single bite and usually wins a one-on-one dispute over a carcass with a leopard, yet it is slow, lacks claws built for fighting, and will often choose to sham death rather than keep fighting a losing battle. On the absolute roster scale it sits below the heavier spotted hyena and the gray wolf in Attack, but its toughness, endurance and odd defensive tricks make it a stubborn opponent for medium-sized animals.

Habitat & range

Found from North and East Africa through the Middle East, Turkey and the Caucasus to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It prefers open habitat, thorn scrub, semi-desert, rocky hills and ravines with caves, and avoids dense forest, true sand desert centres and high cold mountains; it has been recorded to about 3,300 m in Pakistan. It tolerates people well and has been recorded close to dense human settlements in Israel.

Diet & hunting

Mainly a scavenger of carrion, bones and the kills of wolves, big cats and other predators. It also eats insects, fruit such as dates, melons and Balanites fruit, human refuse and small vertebrates, and in Turkmenistan it digs out tortoises. In 2024 a camera trap in Kenya photographed an adult carrying a large honeycomb, the first documented case of honey eating by a hyena. It can drink fresh, soda or salt water, or meet its water needs from melons.

Social life

Generally described as solitary, but with more social structure than that label suggests. Pairs and small groups occur, especially in the larger populations, and several animals may meet at a carcass. Scent marking with anal-gland paste ("hyena butter") on grass stalks, stones and tree trunks communicates presence.

Conservation

Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. The global population is estimated at under 10,000 mature individuals. Threats include deliberate and incidental persecution (in Arabia and North Africa it is baited, tracked and trapped as a supposed grave robber), poisoning (it readily takes strychnine bait laid for wolves or jackals, and was wiped out along Israel's Mediterranean coast by a 1918–1948 rabies poisoning campaign), a shrinking prey base, and a falling supply of carcasses as the large carnivores it scavenges from decline. Camera-trap work in southern Tanzania found it at low density (about 1.4 per 100 km²).

Quick answers