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Article Excerpt
Cultural-historical geography provides a distinctive perspective on the human/animal interface by connecting the present with the past and the particulars of the biophysical with the cultural. Scholars who have explored animals in other disciplines have rarely predicated their studies on convergence of the two dimensions through time. Examined here is a relationship, broadly symbiotic yet also conflictive, (1) between the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) and the culturally diverse peoples in the Horn of Africa. (2) If the roots of this connection originated in the distant past, only the last half-millennium is knowable, and but a fraction of that is retrievable. Integrating time, space, culture, and ecology with the many recorded observations of an animal species in one broad region offers more than the demonstration of a time-honored geographical approach. Reconstructing an interrelationship reaching back into time raises issues about the normative place of Homo sapiens at the top of the food chain and the need for a common groundwork of explanation that links humans to the same biological processes as the rest of life on earth. The geographical imagination, adept at converging natural history and culture history, can contribute to this project by identifying, collating, and analyzing inchoate topics into an intelligible process and pattern. Debates surrounding land and life can often be clarified when place and temporality frame the connectiveness of phenomena.
THE SPOTTED HYENA: MAIN CHARACTERISTICS AND DISTRIBUTION
Aside from anything this creature does, the spotted hyena stands out for its singular appearance: Heavy shoulders, sloping back, large head, and wide mouth make this animal seem larger than its actual weight of 50 to 90 kilograms. Upper and lower premolar teeth in those heavily muscled jaws form a powerful pair of shears. Forelimbs longer than the hind legs produce a lumbering gait that, together with luminescent eyes, adds to its fearsome reputation (Figure 1). A dozen distinctive vocalizations allow communication within and between clans in this most social of species in the order Carnivora. An eerie whoop call and a sound that resembles the laugh of a demented person are the two tonalities that wildlife watchers invariably remark upon. Humans also comment on its purported offensive odor, although it is not clear how much of that comes from glandular secretions, feeding habits, or the practice of rolling in strong-smelling regurgitated material.
Most unusual for a mammalian species is its sexual mimicry: Not only is the clitoris of the female similar to the penis of the male in size, shape, and erectile ability, it also has a urogenital function and doubles as a birthing canal. Cross-gender resemblance advanced a widespread belief going back to Classical Antiquity that this animal was either hermaphroditic or capable of changing its sex from year to year. Even though close observation disproved those ancient assertions, current folklore about the spotted hyena revolves around similar suppositions. Stephen Gould (1981) explained physiognomic convergence of the sexes as a case of accidental evolution, whereas Martin Muller and Richard Wrangham (2002) interpreted it as an evolutionary adaptation of females directing their aggression more toward females than to males. Fierce behavior may start in the den when a stronger cub kills its weaker sibling (Frank, Glickman, and Licht 1991). Unlike other mammals, female spotted hyenas are larger and more aggressive than their male counterparts. Their different characteristics together have prompted Africans to judge them negatively (Schwartz 2005). Scientists who have studied them agree that these animals are intelligent and adaptable (Kruuk 1972; Glickman 1995).
Most studies of the spotted hyena have come from research in East Africa, where the animal is a conspicuous carnivore in an ecosystem that features a large ungulate biomass (Kruuk 1972). Historically the spotted hyena has occurred over most of Africa south of the Sahara except for a notable void in the Congo Basin (Figure 2). The two other extant species of the hyena guild are the brown hyena (Hyaena brunnea), which occurs in the dry savannas and deserts of southern Africa, and the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), found from northern Africa into Southwest and South Asia. The striped hyena is smaller (35 to 50 kilograms), less vocal, solitary, and more of a complete scavenger than its spotted relative.
Europeans have provided a long written record about hyenas. The striped hyena entered European consciousness earlier and more completely than did its spotted cousin because the former has been found near the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, where it still occurs. Information about the spotted hyena was less reliable. Writers of Antiquity, notably Strabo (64/63 B.C.-A.D. 23) ([A.D. 20-23] 1917-1933, 7: 337) and Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) ([A.D. 75-77] 1855, 2: 296-297), called it crocuttas, cyrocrothes, or corocotta. In the Middle Ages, Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus, ca. 1200-1280) ([1255-1270] 1987, 98) mentioned it, as did Edward Topsell (1607, 440-442) in the Renaissance, but none of these writers had observed firsthand these "foure-footed beastes" of Ethiopia. In the eighteenth century, zoological knowledge assigned the spotted hyena its own genus, Crocuta, different from that of the striped hyena (Hyaena) that Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) named. Though a member of the civet family, confusion persisted about the spotted hyena as a kind of wolf. Part of that confusion arose out of what the animal was called in Ethiopia. The Amharic name for "hyena" (djibb, also transliterated as jeb or gib), is derived from the Arabic word for "wolf" (dhi'b), even though no true wolves had lived in Ethiopia. (3) When Francisco Alvarez ([1881] 1970), a Portuguese Jesuit, came to Ethiopia in the 1520s, he described the spotted hyena as a "wolf," the closest analogy to an animal he knew from Europe. (4)
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HYENAS IN THE HORN OF AFRICA
In the vast region known as the Horn of Africa (see Figure 2), now home to more than 90 million people (Population Reference Bureau 2005), humans have coexisted with hyenas since long before domestication changed a hunting-and-gathering economy to one of agriculture in the highlands and pastoralism in the semiarid lowlands. Specifics of the human/hyena association in the Horn of Africa have come to light only for the last 500 years of recorded history. Although writing systems predate European travelers of the early sixteenth century, many facets of land and life in this region have no written description before then. From that time span an ethnozoologic pattern has emerged to explain why spotted hyenas have held their own. No census has ever been taken, but the composite of various lines of evidence indicates that, as a most conservative estimate, between 4,000 and 5,000 spotted hyenas live in this part of Africa today. (5)
Travelers' comments suggest that hyenas may have been even more numerous in the historic past. James Bruce ([1790] 1813, 7 : 230) wrote, probably with some exaggeration, that "they were a plague in Abyssinia in every situation, both in the city and in the field, and 1 think surpassed the sheep in number." Samuel Gobat ([1851] 1969, 24), who traveled in northern Ethiopia between 1830 and 1832, wrote that the "plains are infested with hyenas, whose hideous howling--precursors of those frightful devastations with which they ravage cities and villages--continually break the silence, and echo through the darkness of the night." Both of these descriptions convey an emotional attitude designed to impress readers, but it is nonetheless clear that hyenas in the Horn of Africa create some of the same problems now as in they did in the past.
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PERSISTENCE FACTORS
Continuity in the Horn of Africa of both this animal and its association with people has several explanations. In the wildlife-rich area of East Africa, the lion and the spotted hyena are both predators on the large ungulate population. In the Horn of Africa, the lion and leopard have disappeared or become so rare that the spotted hyena is left to occupy an unshared predator niche. The mass of travelers' accounts suggests that large felines have been in abeyance in the more populous parts of Ethiopia for at least two centuries. Although some hyenas live off wild prey, most notably the gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada) in the highlands and small antelopes in the lowlands, the relative rarity of wildlife has meant that livestock more readily support carnivorous appetites. Ethiopia has more than 80 million domesticated hoofed animals; Somalia, with not much more than 10 million people, has more than 35 million head of camels, cattle, sheep, and goats (Mitchell 2003). Hyena clan members working in concert bring down live domesticates and also consume livestock that died from drought, from disease, or by accident. Hyenas with dens near towns or cities live on garbage or other organic refuse.
Hyena persistence also comes from an uneasy complicity with people. This species is one of the few large carnivores that adapt to habitats with dense human populations (Woodroffe 2001, 74). Humans and their domesticated animals provide easy and predictable sources of food. At the same time, passive human tolerance in some situations makes this coexistence possible. In that regard, the Horn of Africa represents a major contrast with South Africa south of the Limpopo River. There, settlers of European origin hunted, trapped, or poisoned the spotted hyena until it had disappeared from most of South Africa (Holub 1881, 1 : 145). Parts of Botswana and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) experienced similar patterns of spotted-hyena decline with the twentieth-century establishment of European-style ranching (Smithers 1971, 110-111). In the Horn of Africa, governments have regarded the...
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