Feliformia Spotlight: Brown Hyena

I was not really planning on doing another hyena blog, but I have a friend who really loves them. I sometimes call him on Skype and read my stories to him. When I mentioned my spotlight blog, he started chanting, "Brown hyena! Brown hyena! Brown hyena!" I began to wonder if he was trying to hint at something. Anyways, this blog is dedicated to a really nice guy who not only takes time out of his schedule to listen to me read, he is also serving in our country's military.

The brown hyena, or strandwolf, can be found mainly in South Africa. Their body length can be as long as 63 inches with a shoulder height as high as 31 inches. The males are usually sightly larger than females, but most of the time, it is hard to tell them apart. They are born with extremely powerful jaws which can break bones at even a young age. They have shaggy brown coats and short tails.

Remember way back when I spotlighted the spotted hyena? They were a matriarchy. The brown hyenas are lead by a male and a female alpha. That's right: dual leadership. From all I found in my research, it is a fairly equal ruling with neither sex having more power than the other. The clans will work together to protect their territory. I noticed a lot of sources cite that the brown hyenas are similar to wolves in their behavior.

They are scavengers when it comes to food. They like to go after carcasses killed by larger predators, but they can still kill smaller animals when necessity arises. They are also omnivores so plants are still on the menu, but be sure that they totally prefer meat.

Couples within brown hyena clans seem to mate weirdly. You have a male and a female get together, but they don't actually mate. The female will go out looking for nomadic males and properly mate with them instead. She will then return to her actual mate where the male will take care of the cubs who are not his. By far, this was the weirdest thing I read about them. It seems contrary to animal nature in general. I'd even find it bizarre to see humans accept this behavior as acceptable. Gestation takes 3 months with a litter of one to five cubs. They are fully independent in 18 months.

I am sure there are some brown hyenas in fiction, but they seem to be avoiding my radar. I see them as a very family oriented community. They work together and all that, but the whole female mating outside of the clan really gives it an alien culture, in my opinion. I just see all the other animals giving them odd looks. Still, it's fun dealing with the weird and wonderful sometimes.

I hope my friend enjoys this spotlight. I personally really enjoyed learning about them. He'll likely try to get me to do another animal, and I probably will. There's a lot of interesting creatures in this world, and I have been privileged in finding many of them.

Thank you for reading my blog! If you enjoyed it, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. Thanks!