THE CARNIVORES 



Like all the animals described in the present chapter, hyaenas are confined to 

 the warmer parts of the Old World; but unlike the civets, they are unknown at 

 the present day in Europe and in the countries lying to the eastward of the Bay of 

 Bengal; although, in past epochs, they were spread over the greater part of 

 Europe, and ranged as far east as China. At no period, however, was the group 

 represented in the Western Hemisphere. 



The existing species of hyenas are three in number, all of them being now 

 generally included in the single genus Hyena ; this genus forming the sole repre- 

 sentative of a distinct family. With the exception of the aard-wolf, the nearest 

 relatives of the hyaenas are the civets; but at the present day the two families 

 are markedly distinct, although, as mentioned on p. 484, extinct forms blend the 

 two so closely together that it is almost impossible to say where civets end and 

 hyenas begin. Hyaenas are massively-built animals, with relatively-long legs, - 

 especially the front pair, deep bodies, short and broad heads, and rather short 

 tails ; their whole appearance being ungainly in the extreme. Their fur is coarse 



and shaggy, and marked, 

 more or less distinctly, 

 either with irregular 

 vertical stripes or large 

 blackish spots. Their feet 

 have but four toes, on both 

 the front and hind-limbs, 

 and are furnished with 

 stout claws, which are 

 permanently protruded, 

 like those of dogs. 



Such are some of 

 their chief external char- 

 acteristics ; but in order to 

 understand their full dif- 

 ferences from the civet 

 tribe, it is necessary to 

 say something with regard 

 to their teeth. Existing^ 

 hysenas have a total of 

 thirty-four teeth, of 

 which f are incisors, \ ca- 

 nines, \ premolars, and \ molars on either side of the jaws. Thus there is but one 

 tooth, which is of small size, behind the flesh-tooth in the upper jaw, while in the 

 lower jaw, as shown in the accompanying figure, the flesh-tooth forms the last of 

 the series. Here, therefore, we have an important difference from the civets, 

 with the single exception of the fossa (p. 454), which is otherwise well distin- 

 guished, most of these having two molar teeth behind the upper flesh-tooth, and 

 the whole of them having one molar behind the lower flesh-tooth. This, however, 

 is not all, for, whereas the civet family (always excepting the fossa) have only two 



UPPER AND OUTER VIEWS OF THE HINDER PART OF THE RIGHT 

 HALF OF THE LOWER JAW OF AN EXTINCT HY^NA. 



The tooth on the left side of the figure is the flesh-tooth. (From the 

 Palatontologica Indica.) 



