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WA-KIKUYU 
117 
hungry he will carry off babies from the huts and some¬ 
times adults are seriously bitten. It is the habit of the 
animal to bite pieces off the exposed parts of the body 
such as the cheek or buttock. 
Donaldson Smith gives some facts concerning the 
strength of the jaws of hyaenas. He saw one of these 
animals pull the horn out of a goat vrhich had been 
fastened to a stake, and with another bite tear off the 
whole hind-leg. On one occasion he wounded a 
hartebeest with a bullet, breaking its leg. A number 
of hyaenas set on the hartebeest and succeeded in 
pulling it down and began to bite pieces out of the 
hindquarters; several of them were shot and the rest 
left the hartebeest. The antelope regained its feet and 
began to make off, but a merciful bullet finished its 
career. 
Hollis has translated from the Nandi the following 
folk-tale which explains how leopards got spots on their 
coats, and hyaenas blotches: Two lion whelps seeing 
some warriors adorned for war thought they would look 
well if painted. They procured some paint, and one 
whelp dabbed a number of black spots on the coat of 
his friend. The spotted whelp began to paint his 
companion when they heard the cry, ‘‘ A goat has been 
lost.” The painter then threw the paint-pot at his 
friend and rushed away to find the lost goat. The 
spotted whelp became a leopard, the partially painted 
one, a hyaena. 
References: W. Scoresby Routledge and Katherine Routledge 
With a Prehistoric People: The Akikuyu oj British East Africa 
1910. 
