REMINISCENCES FROM THE MELBOURNE ZOO. 
167 
HYENAS 
NIGGER. 
Nearly everybody feels a dislike to the hygena. He is an ugly 
animal, and has a most offensive smell; besides, we hear so many grue- 
some stories about the way he robs newly-made graves of their occupants 
in Asia and Africa that we are apt to conclude there is no goodness in 
him. It must be admitted that he is a grave robber. He follows the 
very poor natives when they carry their dead relatives to their crude 
tombs, and he watches their funeral rites, not from sympathy, but from 
eagerness to see them depart for their homes. When he is sure that 
the dead is undefended by the living, he stealthily scrapes away the earth 
from the shallow grave and devours the corpse. Naturally, then, he is 
loathed by the natives. But he has a usefulness that far outweighs his 
ghoulishness. He is a carrion feeder, and is not at all particular whether 
his food has been dead a few minutes or an unspecified length of time. 
In hot countries any dead animal is a real menace to the inhabitants. It 
would disseminate fevers by contaminating waterholes or rivers, or set up 
other epidemics, were it not that the “scavenger” animals such as the 
hysenas and jackals, or birds of the vulture and adjutant type are for 
ever on the watch for them; and some of them, like the hyaena, leave not 
even the bones to decay beneath the fierce tropical sun. 
It must not be believed that the hyaena has no good points. He is 
often tamed and becomes a very good watch-dog for his master. That 
he is capable of sincere and lasting affection is proved by a very pretty 
story told of the striped hyaena at the Zoo. He was secured in his baby- 
hood by a collector of wild animals named Mr. Ellis Josephs, and tamed 
so kindly by him that the animal developed a strong love for his owner. 
Mr. Josephs had only to pat him on the head for the animal (who was 
called “Nigger”), to fling himself on his back and curl up like a dog, 
howling with pleasure. When he was brought as his master’s com- 
panion on a vessel to Australia he was chained to the main hatchway like 
a great dog, and was made much of to relieve the tedium of the voyage. 
But even a collector of wild animals can scarcely lead about a full-grown 
hy«na wherever he goes, and so Mr. Josephs reluctantly sold his pet to 
the Melbourne Zoo. Nigger did not approve of the change of owner- 
ship, and although he thrived well enough in his cage he would not 
