About Bebe

Several weeks ago, I was told by the hyena man that Bebe is an orphan. Apparently when she was very small and had just been introduced to the hyena feeding place, her mother, Jambo, became sick and died. So I’ve been following Bebe’s behaviour and as far as I can tell, it’s true; Bebe has no mother. I’ve seen her try to suckle once from Funyamure, who was extremely reluctant to oblige and sat on her teats, grumbling (Funyamure grumbles a lot). And I’ve seen her being licked by another juvenile, but other than that, Bebe doesn’t associate with any particular female and I often find her at a distance from the other hyenas.

This is interesting in terms of hyena ecology, because if Bebe was orphaned in a place like Serengeti or Masaai Mara, she would almost certainly have died or been killed. Hyenas in such places have to compete for food at kills and little ones like Bebe rely on their mothers’ protection so that they can get access to food. Where they are unsuccessful at kills they can still suckle and they do so up until they’re about 18 months old. Even if an orphaned hyena was able to survive without their mothers’ help getting food and without suckling, they would still be very vulnerable to attacks by other hyenas so their chances in the wild are very slim.

Yet Bebe is doing extremely well. I hadn’t seen her for several nights after Arafa and the camel feast, and I was worried that she might have fallen ill with whatever it was that killed the camel. Then I spent four days in Dire Dawa, without being able to find out if she was ok, so I was like a worried parent and pretty relieved to see her last night when I went back to see the feeding. She’s put on a lot of weight since last week and her body is noticeably bigger, though her head and nose are still small and still extremely cute.

She’s very clever and has developed strategies that allow her access to food and protection from other hyenas. During the feeding, she’ll stand behind the hyena man, while the other hyenas stand in front of him. And the hyena man knows she’s there so every now and then he turns and calls her name so that she can come close and take some meat. She also stands closer to the tourists than other hyenas so that when food is thrown their way, to bring the hyenas closer for photos, Bebe gets first access. And she also uses proximity to people as a means of protection. If she’s being persecuted by bigger hyenas, she’ll go and lie down close to the house or close to people watching so that she’s left alone by the other hyenas who are not brave enough to come as close. Although Tukwondilli, in one of his mad moments, might do so and I’ve had him come very close to me at the shrine in order to get away from Dibbey in one of her aggressive moods.

Bebe is so trusting that if she’s lying down near me and I make a sudden movement, the other hyenas further away will scatter, but Bebe just lifts her little head to see what’s going on. In fact she lets me come as close as half a metre so long as I talk and reassure her. This just wouldn’t be possible with the other hyenas who are really quite skittish when there’s no food to be had. So Bebe’s survival strategy as an orphan is to associate with humans, which in other parts of Africa would be detrimental, but around here works to her advantage.

Waraba igi harir inta

In the early hours of Saturday morning, at about 3.30 am, I was filming the hyenas at the sports ground near Thewodros Hotel (read dirt covered, open space used for motorbike practice) when a soldier who was watching me shouted ‘look!’ and pointed behind me to where a hyena was sniffing at my camera bag. I made the usual hissing noise to scare the hyena off but it grabbed the bag in its mouth and high-tailed it for the creek. The soldier and I took off after it and we chased it along the creek bed and into some bushland. After following the rustling noises in the pitch dark, I spotted my bag in the torchlight and went to retrieve it. I couldn’t believe it, the bag was empty. The hyena had rifled through my camera bag! We retraced our steps and found the spare batteries and the memory cards but my telephoto lens was missing. I still haven’t found it and unless the hyena has a Sony A1 series video camera, it’s of no use to the him, and I really would like it back.

Arafa

Arafa in Harar must be the hyenas’ favourite time of year. From the great number of sheep that are sacrificed and eaten, come so many skins and bits of entrails that the hyenas can’t consume all of it and much still lies on the streets nearly a week after the celebration. And just to compound things, this year a camel died near the Erer hyenas’ feeding place and the hyena man procured it for the clan. So in one night the hyenas consumed an entire camel as well as several cow’s heads and some sheep and goat remains. They gorged themselves silly and are now visibly fatter and noticeably more placid.

It was also interesting to watch one hyena that was trying to eat the camel’s head. It really seemed to be scared of the head and would tentatively move in, quickly nip at the head and then dash off with its tail between its legs. After doing this several times, it must have been satisfied that the head wouldn’t bite back so it picked it up and ran off with it. You get a pretty good idea of just how strong hyenas are, when you see one running at speed with a camel’s head held high in its mouth. I didn’t have the means to weigh it but it must have been 10kg to 15kg.