Iir^XA CROCUTA. 
201 
bones ; he had evidently not found much food the night before. Unlike jackals, he 
smelt quite sweet when being skinned. They are credited by the natives with being 
body-snatchers; and this is probably true. 
“ The natives are very keen to obtain the heart, which they eat, believing that they 
thus obtain the courage [sic) of the hyaena. They also cut off the whiskers, if they 
get a chance, and keep them as a charm. The meat is also readily eaten by the 
poorer among them, and I found myself that the flesh taken from the head was not 
at all bad. 
“Although usually silent, they appear to emit a kind of laughing cry at times. 
They are never found in the interior of the desert beyond some 10 or 15 miles from 
the cultivation, except in an exceptional case, when they will follow a caravan if they 
think there is a sick or dying camel.”—W. E, db W. 
Hy^EXA CROCUTA. 
Canis crocuta, Erxleb. Syst, Reg. Anim. 1777, p. 578. 
Hycena crocuta, TAmm. Spec. Zool. Geogr. 1777, p. 366; Riipp. Neue Wirbelth, 1840, p. 40; 
Heuglin, Peterm. Mittheil. 1861, p. 14; id. SB. k. Ak. Wiss. Wien, liv. i. 1866, p. 553 ; 
Blanford, Geol. Zool. Abyss. 1870, p. 235. 
The only specimen of the Spotted Hyaena from the district treated of in this book is 
a puppy in the British Museum, received from Major Fenton, R.A.M.C., in 1893, from 
the neighbourhood of Suakin. The colour is uniform liver-brown, without markings 
of any kind. The incisors and canines are the only teeth which have cut the gum ; 
the skull is identified as belonging to this species by the breadth of the front of the 
palate, by the incisive foramina being almost wholly within the premaxillae, and by 
the shape of the back of the palate. 
The skull of the Spotted Hyaena is very much heavier than that of the Striped 
Hyaena, with a much broader snout. The teeth are also very much heavier, the 
carnassials above and below very much larger and longer, and this tooth in the lower 
jaw wants the middle inner cusp found in H. hyoena. In the Striped Hyaena the molar 
in the upper jaw is usually absent, and if present it is very small, quite vestigial, while in 
the Spotted Hyaena it is always present and of considerable transverse breadth, extending 
on to the palate beyond the plane of the inner cusp of the carnassial. The palate and 
the postnarial opening in the skull of II. crocuta are very broad, the posterior border 
of the palate forming a wide angle, while in H. hycena the opening forms a narrow 
Roman arch. The postorbital frontal processes are very tardy in development, and the 
forehead is wider and more rounded in the young of the Spotted Hyaena. 
2 D 
