Spotted hyena

Where does the spotted hyena live?

Home: Savannah, dry woodland and semi-desert in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the wild it lives in these countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Namibia.

Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.

The short profile

Fully grown: about 70 to 90 cm tall at the shoulder. It weighs about 60 kilograms. On the menu: meat.

The story behind it

Spotted hyenas live in clans that hold anywhere from about eight to eighty animals, and every clan is led by a female. Females are bigger than males and eat first at a kill. Hunting is what they mostly do: studies of wild clans found that from half up to almost all of their food comes from animals they caught themselves, usually wildebeest, zebra or gazelle run down over a long chase. Whatever is left afterwards they finish, because their teeth and jaw muscles crush bone that other hunters leave behind. The giggling sound people call a laugh is not laughter. Researchers who recorded it found that hyenas make it when they are excited or under pressure, most often while several of them squabble over food, and the pitch carries information about who is calling. Cubs are born with their eyes already open and grow up together in a shared den.

Find it on the globe

Spotted hyena is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.