We have moved

I've decided to relocate this blog to http://hararhyenas.wordpress.com/
The new site will have a gallery with pics of your favourite hyenas.

How to hoover the unseen

The oowooping sound that Shebo was making in the last post (if you were able to download the video) has an added dimension to the ecological explanation that is given for why they make the sound. As I said, in ecological terms, the oowoop is a kind of ‘I’m here’ message. Although I’ve seen a hyena making this noise, combined with a protest yell, after it was chased off its food by a higher ranking hyena. In which case it’s also a way of saying ‘I’m here and I’m indignant that that bloody bossy hyena over there took a bone from me’. But, in terms of local tradition, the hyenas, when they make this sound, are actually sucking jinn (In Islam, beings that exist unseen in the human world) from the ground. According to my sources, there are good and bad jinn in Harar and they are all pervasive, with the bad ones occasionally possessing people. And this is where the hyenas come in. They serve the town by locating and eating the bad jinn and maybe mistakenly eating the odd good one. While humans can only occasionally see jinn, hyenas see them all the time and will chase and eat them at every opportunity. In fact it’s been suggested that a hyena attacking a person could well be a case of a hyena attacking a jinni that has possessed a person. So presumably, the ‘oo’ sound is the hyena sucking the jinn from the ground, and the ‘woop’ is the point at which it enters the hyena’s stomach, the tomb of the jinn. But it goes even further. After a hyena has eaten a jinni it vomits the jinni’s remains, be they fingernails (sometimes with fingers attached), hair, or if the jinni has been digested properly, gold and jewels. Hence if you find a hyena’s cave and look around inside you might be lucky to find gold and jewels that the occupant has regurgitated onto the cave floor. If you’re a biologist you’ll feel lucky just finding the hairballs, because you can analyse them and see what the hyena has recently eaten.
Now, even though spotted hyenas have been known of outside of Africa since the time of Aristotle, there’s no mention of them in the Quran or the Haddiths so it’s likely that this belief - that hyenas can eat unseen spirits - dates back to the earlier, probably animistic beliefs of the Harla people; the predecessors of the Hararis. So you see, hyenas serve a double role in Harar. First, they clear the streets of any food scraps that people might have left lying around and second, they clear the town of any Jinn that happen to have entered. So if you happen to live in Harar - or even if you’re just visiting – and you hear a knock at your door in the middle of the night… don’t answer it; it’s most probably a jinni being chased by a hyena.

Sounds of Shebo

There’s a folk tale from here in Harar where Donkey is mourning Hyena’s dead son and says, rather insincerely, ‘Oh Hyena. No matter how far you are, your voice is always near. Why did your son desert you so?’
The ‘voice’ that donkey is referring to is the oowoop sound that hyenas make in the night. They can be across the other side of town but the sound seems to be coming from right outside the house. And each hyena’s oowoop is not only unique, but pretty easily recognisable if only you pay attention. This is video of Shebo – with wire still around her neck – making her oowoop. She makes the noise with nose to the ground, probably to get the most out of the reverberation, and she adds a trill to her oowoop, which may or may not be because of the wire tightening around her neck. But it’s always nice to hear it at night and know that she’s still kicking. I managed to find a vet at Haramaya University who said he has the capability to come and sedate her and remove the wire, but I’m having trouble mobilising him. Fingers crossed

Bebe at her most scary

This video is not very meaningful, it's just gratuitous cuteness.
A tourist approaches the hyena man and takes hold of the stick with which to feed the hyenas their pieces of meat. The slavering beast emerges from the shadows and lunges at the food. The tourist drops the stick and runs

Postscript on Tukwondilli

Further to the last post on Tukwondilli and Dibbey is a rather strange development. I'm finding that Tukwondilli, rather than avoiding Dibbey and her aggressive outbursts, actually follows her around. I've been noting the times when they arrive at the feeding and Tukwondilli, almost without fail, arrives within two minutes of Dibbey; usually right on her tail. Then when she's feeding or sorting through the bones that the hyena man leaves out for them, Tukwondilli just stands behind her as if he's waiting for something to happen. Something usually does happen, as Dibbey loses patience and chases him off or tries to bite him. No wonder she's irate. Imagine having a hyena follow your every move in life. Again I'm having trouble understanding this strange, droopy-nosed male.

Tukwondilli Revisited

A while back, I put up a post about Tukwondilli. At the time I thought he was slightly loopy the way that he would run through lines of tourists and squeeze behind people sitting with their backs to the shrine. But now I realise there is method to his madness and he really is quite a switched-on individual, albeit a little highly strung.
Tukwondilli has a tormentor and her name is Dibbey. Recall that I posted a video showing Dibbey, in one of her moods, chasing off another hyena and then biting Bebe. Well, it’s more accurate to say that that was her only mood. Dibbey reminds me of the Tasmanian Devil in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. She arrives like a whirlwind, biting and chasing and shoving other hyenas out of the way and her presence hangs over the group like a black cloud. Apart from a couple of elders, the other hyenas avoid her and wisely so because Dibbey is a very stoutly built, highly irate, mass of aggression. And she actually disrupts the feeding spectacle because the other hyenas are reticent to come and feed while Dibbey is there, so they just hang back in the shadows so that all the tourists get to see is the one, very angry, hyena taking all the food.




But in another way it adds to the spectacle. Tukwondilli spends his entire time at the feeding avoiding Dibbey. And the reason is that she hates him, really hates him. If he goes anywhere near, she’ll turn on him and try to bite him and she watches him like a hawk so that if he comes to close to the hyena man she drops whatever she’s eating and chases him off. And Tukwondilli, in turn, watches Dibbey very closely. Wherever she goes, he positions himself either behind her or at a safe distance or in a safe place. And for Tukwondilli, this often means a place close to, or among, the people watching. Hence, I often find myself sitting at the shrine, feeling a presence behind me and then noticing a big, droopy-looking nose beside my face as Tukwondilli looks over my shoulder at his nemesis. He’s far more afraid of Dibbey, than he is of any mere human and it’s almost impossible to get his attention when watching her, wide-eyed. But as I said it adds to the spectacle. The hyena man is well aware of the relationship between these two and he knows Tukwondilli’s habits. So he brings the food to the shrine and sits down, holding food out for Tukwondilli, who squeezes behind the people, taking strips of meat, while Dibbey watches from a safe distance, absolutely boiling with rage. The people find it exciting, Tukwondilli gets fed and there is no squabbling because Dibbey is far too afraid of groups of humans to come so close as to get at Tukwondilli. But who knows what happens after the people have gone and the hyenas are left alone to sort out their differences. Often Dibbey is so stuffed from hogging all the food that she lies down and sleeps, so Tukwondilli probably gets some peace. And it’s a big territory that the Erer hyenas live in so that he probably finds a safe place at a safe distance, hopefully with some garbage to rummage through, and passes the rest of the night peacefully. But I retract what I said about him being a little insane; he’s a very clever individual who knows where his advantage lies; he has a special place in my heart; and his breath really isn’t too bad, for a hyena.