Hyena Myths and Realities 
Both male and female genitals are strikingly similar. Why? 
by Stephen Jay Gould 
I freely admit that the spotted, or 
laughing, hyena is not the loveliest 
animal to behold. Still, it scarcely de- 
served the poor reputation imposed 
upon it by our illustrious forebears. 
Three myths about hyenas helped to 
inspire the loathing commentary of 
ancient texts. 
Hyenas, first of all, were regarded 
as scavengers and consumers of car- 
rion. In his Natural History, Pliny 
the Elder (a.d. 23-79) spoke of them 
as the only animals that dig up graves 
in search of corpses ( ab uno animali 
sepulchra erui inquisitione corpo- 
rum). Conrad Gesner, the great six- 
teenth-century cataloger of natural 
history, reported that they gorge them- 
selves so gluttonously after finding a 
corpse that their bellies swell to be- 
come taut as a drum. They then seek 
a narrow place between two trees or 
stones, force themselves through it, 
and extrude the remains of their meal 
simultaneously at both ends. 
Hans Kruuk, who spent years study- 
ing spotted hyenas on their home turf 
(the plains of East Africa), has labored 
to dispel these ancient myths (see his 
book The Spotted Hyena , University 
of Chicago Press, 1972). He reports 
that hyenas will scavenge when they 
get the opportunity. (Almost all car- 
nivores, including the noble lion, will 
happily feast upon the dead product 
of another animal’s labor.) But spotted 
hyenas live in hunting clans of up to 
eighty animals. Each clan controls a 
territory and kills most of its own food 
— mainly zebra and wildebeest — in 
communal, nocturnal pursuit. 
As a second insult, hyenas were 
widely regarded as hybrids. Sir Walter 
Raleigh excluded them from Noah’s 
ark in 1614 since he believed that 
God had only saved the purely bred. 
Hyenas were reconstituted after the 
flood through the unnatural union of 
a dog and cat. In fact, the three living 
species of hyena form a family of their 
own within the order Carnivora. They 
are most closely related to the viver- 
rids (weasels and their allies). 
As a final, phony blot on their es- 
cutcheon, and in the unkindest cut 
of all, many ancient writers charged 
that hyenas were hermaphrodites, 
bearing both male and female organs. 
The medieval bestiaries, always trying 
to draw a moral lesson from the de- 
pravity of beasts, focused on this sup- 
posed sexual ambivalence. A twelfth- 
century document, translated by T. 
H. White, declared: 
Since they are neither male nor female, 
they are neither faithful nor pagan, but 
are obviously the people concerning 
whom Solomon said: “A man of double 
mind is inconstant in all his ways.” About 
whom also the Lord said: “Thou canst 
not serve God and Mammon.” 
But hyenas also had some formi- 
dable defenders against this particular 
calumny. Aristotle himself had de- 
clared in the Historia animalium: 
“The statement is made that the hyena 
has both male and female sexual or- 
gans; but this is untrue.” 
Aristotle — and not for the first time 
— was right of course. But the legend 
had arisen for a good reason. Female 
hyenas are virtually indistinguishable 
from males. Their clitoris is enlarged 
and extended to form an organ of the 
same size, shape, and position as the 
male penis. It can also be erected. 
Their labia have folded up and fused 
to form a false scrotum that is not 
discernibly different in external form 
or location from the true scrotum of 
males. It even contains fatty tissue 
forming two swellings easily mistaken 
for testicles. Authors of the most re- 
cent paper on spotted hyenas found 
the appearance of males and females 
“so close that sex could only be de- 
termined with certainty by palpation 
of the scrotum. Testes could be located 
in the scrotum of the male compared 
with soft adipose tissue in the false 
scrotum of the female.” 
British zoologist L. Harrison Mat- 
thews wrote the most extensive ana- 
tomical description of the hyena’s sex- 
ual anatomy in 1939 ( Philosophical 
Transactions of the Royal Society of 
London, vol. 230). He described the 
peniform clitoris, emphasizing that it 
is no smaller than the male penis, is 
equally constricted to a single slitlike 
opening at the tip, and is as subject 
to erection as its male counterpart. 
He concluded his dry and precise 
pages of description with as forceful 
a statement of wonder as measured 
British scientific prose would allow: 
“It is probably one of the most unusual 
of the forms which the external orifice 
of the urogenital canal takes amongst 
female mammals.” 
Matthews also investigated the in- 
teresting question of how hyenas do 
it, given a female orifice no larger 
than the slit of a male’s penis. “In 
the pre-pubertal state,” he writes, 
“these functions are obviously impos- 
sible, owing to the minute size of the 
opening.” But as the female matures 
the slit gradually lengthens and 
“creeps down round the ventral sur- 
face . . . travelling down the midline” 
until it forms an orifice 1.5 cm long 
and extending from the tip of the clit- 
toris to its base. This lengthening of 
the slit and a subsequent enlargement 
of the nipples following pregnancy and 
parturition help distinguish older fe- 
males from males. We can now un- 
derstand the basis for ancient myths 
that hyenas were either simultaneous 
hermaphrodites (bearing male and fe- 
male organs at the same time) or male 
for part of their life and then female. 
Nature’s oddities cry out for ex- 
planation, and we must ask what ad- 
vantages females gain from looking 
like males. Immediately, we come 
upon the other most striking oddity 
of hyena biology: females not only re- 
semble males; they are also larger than 
males, contrary to the usual pattern 
in mammals, including humans. Fe- 
males in Kruuk’s East African clans 
averaged 120 pounds in body weight 
versus 107 pounds for males. More- 
over, they lead the clans in hunting 
and defense of territory and are gen- 
erally dominant over males in indi- 
vidual contacts. Dominance is not 
merely a result of larger size because 
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