Cheetah or Hyena ?

Which do you like best ? I believe most of you will spontaneously go for the cheetah, the sleek, athletic hunter, as compared to the hyena, the not so pretty and oddly proportioned hunter and scavenger, which even in Walt Disney movies is pictured as an ugly, stealing coward. But what if we look at the cubs ? All small animals are adorable, but as my ranger told me he was a big fan of the hyenas I didn’t quite believe him. That was till we got to the hyena den…

 Judge for yourselves, I bet you’ll have a hard time deciding !

P.S. I am very proud and honoured that this blog is also featured as a blog for  Africa Geographic

THE CHEETAHS :

We were lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of time with a cheetah mum and her four (3 month old) cubs in Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana. Though the cheetah is commonly found in most of Africa, it is listed as endangered, threats being predation by other carnivores, a gene pool with a low variability and persecution by mankind. Cheetah males live in small groups, females live alone, and raise their cubs alone. They are prolific breeders, and after a gestation period of 90 to 98 days, can give birth to as many as nine cubs, though average litter size is four. But the rate of cub mortality is awful high, it varies from 50% to 75%, in extreme cases up to 90%. Seems our mum here at Mashatu is, at the moment, doing pretty well with four out of five still alive and kicking…. and running, and jumping, and sliding, and climbing.

The cubs will stay with their mum for about 18 months in which time they have to learn how to survive: to run really fast, hunt wild prey and avoid other predators. Cheetahs are the fastest land animals and can reach a speed of up to 120km/h ( 75mph). Because of this specialisation they are however poorly equipped to defend themselves, speed also being their main means of defence. When mum leaves them at 18 months they will stay together for another 6 months after which the females leave, the males will stay together for life.

THE HYENAS :

We saw the cubs at Mala Mala Game Reserve in South Africa. Did you know that the spotted hyenas are the most social carnivores. They live in large groups of up to 80 individuals and show complex social behaviour, almost like in certain primates. They recognise different individuals, know which one is more (or less) reliable, they recognise kin and rank relationships among clan mates, and adaptively use this knowledge in social decision making. The dominance ranks are not correlated with size or aggression, no rather like with us, with ally networks, and rank is acquired through coalition ! They make the most efficient use of animal matter of all African carnivores, being able to eat and digest skin, bone and animal waste. They are immense important for the eco-system, sort of being the garbage men of the bush, imagine where we would be without those !

A clan’s social life evolves around the den, this particular den at Mala Mala has been in use for quite a while, by a number of females with cubs. The gestation period for hyena is 110 days in average, after which only 2-3 cubs are born. On our first two visits to this den we saw nothing but bare rocks, but this year we were rewarded with a fabulous sighting. One female was baby-sitting two tiny, 1 month old, brownish-black cubs and three about 3-4 month old cubs, the latter being extremely curious as to what this big green land rover was doing there.

After some patience on our side, and some daring on the cubs side, they came up to a few metres from the car, checking us out, playing in the sand and bushes, always watching us from the corner of their eyes.

The cheetah cubs were totally cute and fluffy, but these little ones are just as adorable. To tell you the truth: their inquisitive nature, and them all looking different, and behaving different, made me fall in love with the hyenas just a little more… now which do you prefer ?

Text & photos by Astrid Bluemel