Reader John Crisp sent a bunch of lovely photos he took in the Masai Mara, Kenya, Africa, including many felids. John’s information is indented.
A wildebeest for lunch:
The lion and lioness together are in the midst of a long mating session. We watched them for 20 minutes and they mated four times. They will maintain that pace for a week, averaging about every fifteen minutes. This activity weakens the male and makes him more vulnerable to a takeover of the pride by another male, who will then kill any young cubs in the pride. So only the strongest males get to leave progeny and in the end they too will be driven from the pride once they are too old. So, to paraphrase the cliché about politics, all leonine careers end in failure.
Post-coital torpor:
A female leopard:
Female leopards and cheetahs raise their cubs alone. Leopards do pretty well, though their cubs can be vulnerable to lions and hyenas. Cheetahs have the hardest time and are under some threat even in the Masai Mara. Since their only asset is speed, they are the only one of the big cats to hunt in daylight, but they are, as our scout rather unkindly said, “cowardly”, which means that they can be chased away from their kill by any of the other cats and by hyenas. The one that photographed in twilight must have been hungry, because soon after this she took off after after a bush hare, but missed in the semi-darkness.
And. . . a d*g!
I have read somewhere that the Hyena is more closely related to cats than to d*gs. Is this true?
Yes, indeed, hyenas are most definitely on the feloid branch of the Carnivora. It is a disgraceful slur on their proud ancestry to refer to them as d*gs!
Yes, I’ve just checked that, and it’s true that hyenas are marginally more closely related to modern felids (42 myr) than to modern canids (55 myr). But they are not cats on this website. I will consider them “d*gs” because they look like d*gs and share all the bad habits of that group!
They are pretty successful, and incredibly interesting animals, bad habits or not. There was a colony of spotted hyenas on the hill above the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab for many years. Initially a psychology dept study in female aggression. The social structure of the colonies is matriarchal, with everyone subject to an alpha female – so there may be similarities to some wolves (not my field). These are heavily androgenized animals with masculinization of the external genitalia. Unfortunately the generation times are not ideal for practical work unless you have tenure. My former postdoctoral advisor just published a study on the genital tract development in these animals that took more than 20 years to complete (not great for a grad student or postdoc – although many of us who went through the lab were coauthors on one or another hyena paper along the way).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24582573 (for anyone interested)
One myth that was dispelled for me by the folks on the hill is that these animals steal kills from lions, I’m told that while this happens the opposite is more common.
Fascinating article, Simon. I presume these hyenas were kept penned? I never ran into any hyenas while rambling around in the Berzerkeley hills in the early 70s…
In the early 70’s I think you were safe – not sure when they arrived but I believe some time in the 80s (they were established by the time I got to UCSF in 92)
They were in an enclosed enclosure – meaning large runs inside an enclosure with an outer “hyena proof” fence. The Cal admin would probably have taken a dim view of them escaping. I do remember that they were a really good deal on their per diem – as I recall the daily charge per hyena at the time was only about four or five times what we were paying for a cage of mice at UCSF. The other vivid memory is their bone crunching ability – throw them a strip of six or so neck vertebrae from a sheep and the procedure was “crunch, crunch, crunch, swallow” in about the time it takes to read the four words. Amazing jaw musculature.
Just did a search, looks like they shut down the colony this year:
http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2014-05-12/hyena-heave-ho-times-uc-berkeleys-unique-captive-research
And some you tube footage of the colony (who knew!)
http://tinyurl.com/m2t9qx2
My understanding of the kleptoparasitic relationship between lions and hyenas (which, admittedly, comes mostly from National Geographic Magazine) was that it really depended on the relative size of the hyena clan vs the lion pride: solitary animals and small groups were subject to frequent kleptoparasitism while larger groups weren’t. However, large hyena clans were subject to much greater rates of intraspecies kleptoparasitism, especially against males due to their being smaller and less dominant than females, and this internal pressure was one of the key limitations on the upper size of a hyena clan.
The lion and lioness look like they are smiling for the camera and the lion looks like he is proudly smiling at the lioness as she rolls on her back.
Fantastic photos, John! I particularly love the one of the lioness nursing her cub.
Is this lion mating, one to one or one to many?
A lorgy? 🙂
The canines on the female lion “yawning” are something fierce.
Great photo of the lioness over her kill. One paw on the wildebeest and tail curled up. Mine!
I also love the African sunset (or sunrise?) with the acacia silhouette.
Wonderful photos. And even hyenas (hyenae?) Are cute when they’re young.
Reblogged this on Shashank Patel.