260 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



whatever he leaves, and they occasionally pay with their 

 lives if they grow too impatient. But Donaldson Smith has 

 related an instance in which a pack of hyenas entered into 

 a regular fight with a couple of lions, near a bait, and got 

 the best of it. Once we were sleeping near the body of an 

 elephant. There were many hyenas feeding at the car- 

 cass. Toward morning a lion came near, and menaced the 

 carrion feeders, uttering a long-drawn, moaning sigh. The 

 hyenas, however, refused to be frightened by the self- 

 invited guest, and they responded to his challenge with the 

 most extraordinary chorus of noises to which we ever lis- 

 tened. They refused to leave the carcass, or to admit the 

 lion to his share of the banquet; and the lion made off with- 

 out venturing to try conclusions with them. More extraor- 

 dinary still is the fact that the hyenas sometimes kill and 

 devour very old and crippled lions. Once Lord Delamere 

 shot and very badly wounded a lion, which in the course 

 of the fray mauled him and both his gun-bearers. Camp 

 was pitched where the wounded men lay, while the lion, 

 too badly hurt to leave, crawled into some bushes but a 

 short distance off. After darkness the hyenas assembled, 

 fell on the wounded lion, and after a very noisy fight killed 

 and ate him. 



Hyenas are easily tamed, and in many cases are docile, 

 intelligent, and affectionate. At the Cairo zoological park 

 we saw one which was as devoted as a dog to its keeper. It 

 loved to be stroked, and would lie belly upward while he 

 rubbed it. In ancient Egypt they were tamed and used 

 with greyhounds for the chase; and, extraordinary to relate, 

 they were also fattened for the table, being stuffed with 

 food like so many Strasburg geese. 



