1594 Great and Small Game of Africa 



their greed often incurs summary punishment at the claws and teeth of 

 the lions. It is no fable that hyaenas watch the vultures and thus find 

 the carcases of animals, for I have seen them doing so, " sloping " along, 

 gazing skyward, intent only upon the direction of their fellow-scavengers' 

 flight. I shot a hyaena thus engaged, and, singularly enough, it proved to 

 be one which had been wounded a fortnight previously at my camp, half its 

 lower jaw being blown away with a io-bore charge of buckshot ; it was 

 fat and apparently thriving, however, when killed. They eat every portion 

 of a carcase, skin, flesh, and bones, and leave little for a lion if they find his 

 kill when he is away. They crack almost any bone with their powerful 

 jaws, and what they cannot thus dispose of, they bolt with a wry face and 

 a gulp. This is the reason lions kill so frequently, and I think that in 

 the rare cases where lions fail to revisit their kill, it is owing to the fact 

 that hyaenas have so frequently deprived them of it that they instinctively 

 know how useless it is to return to the spot. At night hyaenas approach a 

 carcase very cautiously, for they are terrible cowards, and stand looking at 

 it and walking round it for half an hour before they venture to seize, 

 perhaps, a " length " of entrails, and rush off with it as far as possible, then 

 work back on it, devouring it inch by inch, till eventually they become 

 satisfied that no hidden danger threatens. When hungry — which must be 

 often — they are very bold, and I have known native babies carried off from 

 the huts. Adults also are sometimes seriously bitten, the cheek or the 

 buttocks being usually seized and torn ofF. I have also known these 

 brutes to enter a camp circle and chew off the riems (by which the oxen 

 are fastened to the trek-touw at night) ; but perhaps the most impudent 

 act I ever witnessed was that of one which chewed the riems from a stel (a 

 set gun), so that the weapon fell and exploded, and the hyaena, when his 

 little scare was over, returned and ate the bait that was tied on the muzzle. 

 Other Europeans besides myself witnessed this extraordinary feat. Hyaena 

 pups are usually born in March and April, and I believe the number in a 



