Cry of the Kalahari Read online

  Early the next evening, we found Star headed straight for the lions’ gemsbok kill, which was by now reduced to a rubble of white bones, strips of tattered red meat, and folds of skin. The lions were still there, sleeping on their backs, their legs sticking up from bloated bellies. Star flopped down beneath a bush to sleep, and to wait.

  These were the same lions Mark had pushed away from the drugged jackal with the Land Rover; we had seen them quite often and believed they were permanent residents in our area. Tonight it was around eleven when they finally roused themselves and walked single file through the woodland of West Dune.

  Star must have heard them leave. She stood up and circled the kill site three times, smelling and staring from different positions. This is one of the most dangerous situations brown hyenas ever face. They depend heavily on the leftovers from lions, and on finding such carrion before it is gobbled up by jackals or other brown hyenas, or by the vultures that arrive at dawn. But without being able to actually see the gemsbok carcass in the tall grass, Star had to rely primarily on her sense of smell to tell her whether all the lions had gone. It must have been difficult, in the confusion of odors from gemsbok remains and those of lion dung and urine. She took several tentative steps forward, then stood still, her nose raised, her ears perked to pick up any clue that might help her avoid walking into a lion. Fifteen minutes later, she had worked her way to within twenty-five yards of the gemsbok. After another long wait, she finally went to the carcass and began to feed.

  After nibbling at morsels of stringy meat, tendons, and sinew, she opened her jaws wide and began to crush leg bones as thick as baseball bats and to swallow splinters at least three inches long. (We measured these later, by fecal analysis.) A brown hyena’s teeth are veritable hammers specialized for processing bone: The premolars are flattened and enlaiged, unlike the sharp, scissorlike cutting blades of other predators. Tilting her head to one side, Star wedged her teeth between the ball and socket of a hind leg until it tore free. Carrying it by the knee, she walked into the thick bush of the duneslope, where she tucked the leg under an acacia bush about 100 yards from the riverbed.

  Star was uncanny in her ability to locate lion kills and to know when the remains—the most important part of a brown hyena’s wet-season diet—would be abandoned. However, she also spent many long, lonely nights walking for miles and finding nothing to eat but a mouse or an old bone.

  The few scanty reports on brown hyenas described them as solitary scavengers, real loners that ate only carrion or occasionally hunted small mammals. At first we thought this description was probably accurate: Star followed that feeding pattern and was always alone. But soon we began seeing some extraordinary behavior that made us question whether browns were indeed solitary creatures.

  Any information about how many of them live in a group, whether or not they defend a communal territory, and why they associate together is important for the conservation of hyenas. But there is another reason to investigate their social life: Man is also a social carnivore, and by understanding the evolution and nature of societies of other predators, we can better understand our own sense of territoriality, our need for identity as part of a group, and our aggressive tendencies as competitors.

  Later that night, following Star when she left the carcass, we noticed that she did not wander aimlessly over the range, but traveled on the distinct pathways she had used on previous nights. Some of these joined or crossed well-used game trails, such as Leopard Trail, a major route for gemsbok, kudu, giraffe, jackals, and leopards moving north-south along a string of temporary water holes at the foot of West Dune. Usually, however, the hyenas’ paths were visible only as faintly divided grass or lightly compacted sand.

  Star paused at a grass clump, smelling a small, dark blob at nose level on one of the stems. Then, in a most bizarre display, she stepped over the grass, raised her tail, and everted a special rectal pouch. By swiveling her hindquarters to feel for the stalk, she directed the two-lobed pouch to the stem and “pasted” a drop of white substance that looked remarkably like Elmer’s Glue. After she had lowered her tail, she retracted the pouch and walked on. We took a sniff of the paste; it had a pungent, musty odor. Just above the white drop, a smaller rust-colored secretion was also smeared on the grass.

  During the following weeks we saw other hyenas traveling the same trails that Star used, always alone, and often stopping to smell the paste that Star and others had left on the grass-stalks. Before moving on, they would add their own chemical signature to the stem, so that, in spots where paths crossed, a grass clump could have as many as thirteen scent maries, very much like a sign post at a highway intersection.

  Late one night we were following a very timid female, about Star’s size, that we had named Shadow. She was walking south along the riverbed on one of the hyena paths and pausing every hundred yards or so to smell a scent marie and then paste over it. She crossed South Pan through Tree Island and entered the thick bush, where we lost her. It was one o’clock in the morning, so we stopped for coffee on the edge of the riverbed before looking for another hyena. We were sitting on top of the Land Rover in the moonlight sipping from our Thermos cups, when Star came along. She crossed the first hyena’s path and stood smelling Shadow’s fresh paste mark for nearly a minute, her long hairs bristling. Then she changed course and followed quickly after her.

  We managed to keep Star in sight until we could see Shadow walking back toward Star in the moonlight, the two dark forms moving silently through the tall, silvery grass. We stopped, Mark flicked on the spotlight, and the most unusual behavior we had ever seen between two animals began to unfold.

  Star approached and Shadow crouched down until her belly was flat to the ground. She drew her lips up tightly and opened her mouth wide, showing her teeth in an exaggerated grin. Her long ears stuck out from her head like a floppy hat, and her tail curled tightly over her back. Squealing like a rusty gate hinge, she began crawling around Star, who also turned, but in the opposite direction. Each time Shadow passed beneath Star’s nose, she paused to let her smell the scent glands beneath her tail. The hyenas pirouetted around and around, like ballerinas on a dimly lit stage.

  The strange greeting continued for several minutes, even after Star tried to walk on down the trail. Each time she began to move away, Shadow hurried to lie in front of her, inviting Star to take another sniff under her tail. Like an aristocratic lady dismissing her attendant, Star finally stood with her nose held high, refusing to further indulge Shadow. Eventually she walked away, and Shadow departed in a different direction.

  Several nights later we found Star again, but she was not alone. Tagging along behind her were two smaller hyenas who were only three-quarters her size and had finer, darker hair. We named them Pogo and Hawkins. They were romping behind Star along the riverbed near Cheetah Hill, playfully biting each other’s ears, face, and neck. Whenever Star found a bit of carrion, they rushed to her, “grinning,” squealing, and crawling back and forth under her nose, begging for food. In response to this performance, Star shared her find with them, and we naturally assumed that they were her cubs. But the next night we found Pogo and Hawkins with Patches, an adult female with tattered ears. If they were Star’s cubs, why would they follow Patches?

  By April we could recognize seven different brown hyenas in the immediate area. A large male we called Ivey had immigrated into the area quite a few months before. There were four adult females—Patches, Lucky, Star, and Shadow—and the youngsters, Pogo and Hawkins. But it was often difficult to identify the dark, shaggy creatures at night, and since brown hyenas are notoriously difficult to sex under the best of conditions, there were many times when we were unsure of both the sex and the identity of the hyena we were following.

  Reluctantly, we came to the conclusion that we would have to immobilize and eartag as many of the browns as possible. This was a dismaying prospect, for it had taken many months to habituate the seven hyenas to our presence. If the darting alienated any
of them, it could jeopardize our entire research program. Yet, unless we marked them, we could make mistakes in our observations of their social behavior.

  Mark used a silencer for the darting rifle made by modifying a Volkswagen muffler, and we waited for an opportunity to dart Star, Pogo, and Hawkins. It came one night when the youngsters were following the older female to the remains of a gemsbok carcass. The cubs soon lost interest in the wrinkled skin, and in the bones that were probably too large for them to break, and wandered off, leaving Star to feed alone. By inching the truck slowly forward and stopping each time Star looked up, we moved to within twenty yards of her. Working slowly, with quiet movements, Mark estimated the dosage, prepared the dart, and slid it into the rifle. Star was very nervous, perhaps because of the odor of lions in the area. At the click of the rifle bolt she looked up into the spotlight and then dashed off a few yards. But after staring at the truck for a minute, she licked her chops and returned slowly to feed, her tail flicking—a sign that she had relaxed again.

  Mark put his cheek to the rifle stock and took aim at her dark form. I gripped my notebook hard and looked away, afraid of what was about to happen and certain that she would dash off and we would never see her again. Months of hard work—everything, it seemed—were riding on this one shot. Mark brought his arm slowly up under the gun, but at the mere rustling of his nylon jacket, Star ran off again. This time she stared at the Land Rover for several minutes, and then began walking away.

  We didn’t move—not a muscle—for the next hour. Star was still in sight, lying down with her head on her paws, watching. After a while my back began to ache and my hips and legs to numb. I couldn’t imagine how Mark must be feeling, one elbow on the steering wheel, the other on the door frame, and his cheek on the stock as he hunched forward over the gunsights.

  Star knew something wasn’t right with that carcass. When she stood again we could almost see her trying to decide whether to leave or come back to feed. Finally she lowered her head and plodded slowly toward the carcass.

  Marie gently squeezed the trigger. There was a muffled pop, and we could actually see the dart fly from the barrel of the rifle. It slapped Star in the shoulder. She jumped back, whirling, twisting, and biting at the missile. Then she ran. Swearing under his breath, Mark quietly swung the spotlight after her. Otherwise, we did not move.

  Star loped to the very limit of the light, where we could barely see her. There she stopped and looked around in the darkness, staring and listening, as if trying to figure out what had stung her in the shoulder. I was sure we had blown it and that she would never trust us again. But then her tail began flicking, and, unbelievably, she walked directly back to the carcass and started feeding again, without even giving us a glance.

  Minutes later she slumped to the ground, and we let out deep sighs of relief. Pogo and Hawkins, who were much less wary than adult browns, came back to the carcass, and having briefly smelled Star, began to gnaw on the bones. Mark darted them, and within fifteen minutes the three hyenas were lying peacefully in the grass. Carrying our equipment box, we eased quietly from the truck, stretched our numb limbs, and began ear-tagging and measuring them.

  “This is a female, isn’t it?” Mark whispered, kneeling beside Star.

  “I’m not sure. Are those things real?” I poked at two fleshy lobes that looked like testicles.

  There we were—two students of zoology, with thirteen years of university between us—poking and prodding the confusing array of sexual and pseudosexual organs carried by this odd beast. Although female brown hyenas lack the enlarged pseudopenis (actually the clitoris) of spotted hyena females, they are equipped with fatty lobes or nodules located where the testicles would be if they were males. After a considerable period of investigation and consultation, we were still not sure if Star was male or female. Fortunately, Hawkins was well equipped with genuine testicles, which resolved our confusion: Star and Pogo were definitely female.

  Star wasn’t the least bit wary of us, several nights later, when she passed within fifteen yards of the truck, wearing her blue plastic ear tag. We followed her to a hartebeest carcass left by lions near the base of Acacia Point, where she began to feed. Fifteen minutes later Pogo and Hawkins joined her.

  They had fed only briefly when all three raised their heads and stared into the darkness. Patches, holding her head high, was walking directly toward them in the spotlight. Pogo and Hawkins fed, but the two adult females glared at each other. Star lowered her head and ears, and every hair on her body stood straight out. Suddenly Patches rushed in and seized her by the neck, biting and shaking her violently. Star shrieked when Patches’ teeth cut through her skin and the blood spread through her blonde neck hair. The two hyenas turned and stumbled through the dry grass, Star throwing her muzzle up and back, trying to break the grip. A cloud of dust shrouded the fighting pair.

  Patches held on for almost ten minutes, flinging her adversary back and forth with such fury that Star’s front feet were lifted from the ground. Blood dripped onto the sand. Between rasping breaths and screams came the sound of teeth grating through thick skin. Patches released Star briefly, found another grip near her ear, and held on. Inches away, Star’s unprotected jugular surged with life. Again and again Patches changed her hold on Star’s neck, raking her through the sand as if she were a rag doll. It was like watching someone being murdered in the street.

  After twenty grueling minutes Patches suddenly released her. I was sickened by the sight of Star’s neck, minced and shredded, with open penny-sized holes in her skin. For a moment I thought she would stumble to her forelegs, never to rise again. But then, as if she had been through little more than a mild scrap, she shook her long hair, flicked her tail, and side by side with Patches, walked over to the carcass. The two cubs had paid no attention to the ruckus; now all four fed close together, their muzzles almost touching. Even though there were no further signs of aggression, after five minutes Star walked away from the carcass and went to sleep nearby. She did not return to feed until Patches had left. Such neck-biting behavior had never before been reported, and it was one of the most intense and stirring encounters between animals that we would witness in the Kalahari.

  For weeks we had seen hyenas, who were supposedly solitary, traveling and scent-marking the same trails and greeting each other with a bizarre crawling ceremony. We had seen Pogo and Hawkins foraging with two different adult females. And now, although the two females had just engaged in a pitched battle, we saw them feeding together at the same carcass. What a hodgepodge of signals they were giving us! This was most definitely not the behavior of a solitary species, in which males and females tolerate each other only long enough for courtship and mating. We became more and more sure that brown hyenas had some sort of unusual social system.

  A few nights later, while looking for a hyena to follow, we found the resident pride of lions feeding on a gemsbok they had killed near Eagle Island, a group of trees north of the Mid Pan water hole. By 11:00 P.M. they had abandoned the carcass and were walking south along the riverbed. Within an hour Ivey, Patches, Star, Shadow, Pogo, and Hawkins were all either at or near the carcass.

  During the rest of that night we saw more instances of their peculiar greeting and neck biting, sometimes preceded by a bout of muzzle-wrestling, when two hyenas would stand side by side, throwing their muzzles up high and hard against each other, each trying to get a grip on the other’s neck.

  But on the whole, the gathering at the carcass was very peaceful, as well as being organized. Usually one hyena—and never more than three—fed while the others slept, groomed, or socialized nearby. They alternated at the carcass; while one was carrying a leg off into the bush, another began to feed. Tonight it was six hours before the last hyena walked off into the bush, leaving only jawbone and scattered rumen content behind. This was leisurely feeding compared to the “scramble competition” between spotted hyenas in the Serengeti of East Africa. The spotteds crowd around a kill in a seething mass
of bodies, competing with their fellows by eating as fast as possible. Dr. Hans Kruuk,1 who studied them in the Serengeti, once saw a clan of twenty-one spotted hyenas consume in thirteen minutes a yearling wildebeest weighing about 220 pounds.

  Unfortunately, we found the browns feeding together on a large carcass only once or twice a week during the rains. But after several months, a sketchy picture of their social organization began to emerge. We were sure that the seven hyenas in the area were not solitary animals but members of a clan.2 Through muzzle-wrestling and neck-biting contests, each had gained a particular rank in the social hierarchy, which was displayed and reinforced in greeting. Ivey, the only adult male in the group, was dominant. The social order among the females ran from Patches at the top, down through Star, Lucky, and Shadow, to Pogo. Hawkins, the young male, was on the same social level as Pogo.

  Usually when two brown hyenas met on a path, they would confirm their status through greeting, and then separate. Neck-biting followed only when the status was not well established, or when a hyena tried to rise through the ranks. Star seemed especially keen on social climbing; some nights she would arrive at a kill site and never feed. Her long hair on end, she would spend the entire time picking on lower-ranking females or challenging Patches.

  One of the benefits of high status was obvious when several hyenas were feeding on a large carcass: If Ivey approached Shadow, they would usually eat together for only two or three minutes, after which Shadow would walk off and rest nearby until Ivey had left. Quite often there would be no obvious aggression on the part of the dominant hyena; it was as if the subordinate simply did not feel comfortable feeding with its superior and preferred to wait until later. As a result, dominants usually held priority at food sources.