STRENGTH OF THE HYENA 
line of fossil animals developing the hyena side, and departing more and 
more from the civet-cat type, until they lead to the modern hyenas and the 
aard-wolf. 
The hyenas compose a family of only three living species, 
but many fossil ones (none American), leading back to Pal- 
hyena and Ictitherium. They have a_ bulky 
body, supported by muscular legs, and big, dog- 
like heads, with very strong jaws and thirty-four massive coni- 
cal teeth, so that ‘‘a hyena is able to crunch in its jaws the 
shin bone of an ox almost as readily as a dog can crush that 
of a fowl.”” The whole frame, indeed, is built for strength. 
F. C. Selous describes how in the Mashuna’s country one 
night a big, spotted hyena sneaked into his camp where a crowd 
of men and dogs were lounging around the fire, and seized 
and carried away a green eland hide which must have weighed 
forty pounds; and although the thief was at once chased it 
dragged that burden three hundred yards before the dogs could 
catch up with it. They are scavengers, not hunters; and go 
forth by night to feed upon what their betters leave, or to pull 
down some small or disabled animal. Their courage is seldom 
great, but with their timidity goes a certain cunning and half- 
stupid boldness which leads them to make daring forays on 
occasion; but when caught they submit abjectly. 
The most widely known one is the striped hyena, one of 
the smaller species, measuring about three feet from the nose 
to the rather short tail, and weighing sixty to seventy pounds. 
It is scattered from southern India eastward to the Caucasus, 
and down into Arabia and Africa, as far as Somaliland and 
the Sudan. It has sloping haunches, high, pointed ears, and 
a yellowish gray coat, bristling along the spine, and marked 
with narrow, transverse stripes of blackish and tawny. It 
frequents open, rocky country for the most part, and where 
there are caves, ruins, or rock-cut tombs, will often take perma- 
nent possession of one for a den instead of digging a burrow. 
159 
Hyenas. 
