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ABSTRACT:
The spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta, the most common large carnivore in the highlands and lowlands of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, has occupied both a scavenging niche and a predatory position at the top of the food chain. To my own field explorations on this animal are added observations of travelers to document its long and ambivalent association with people in the Horn. Spotted hyenas in this region have mostly lived in anthropogenic contexts rather than, as in East Africa, on wildlife. Tolerated as efficient sanitation units, hyenas have removed garbage and carrion from towns. They have also destroyed livestock, killed people and eaten corpses. Famine, epidemics and armed conflict havew provided opportunity for unbridled anthropophagy. The past and present coming together of human and hyena in this multi-ethnic region can be viewed as a vestige of a primeval African ecological relationship going far back in prehistory. Biological processes offer a deeper framework than culture with which to grasp the inherent contradiction of the hyena/human relationship past and present.
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STATISTICS
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