African Animals, Serengeti, Ngorongoro, and Lake Manyara wildlife

Forget conventional wisdom: Spotted Hyenas are not scavengers but intelligent predators that hunt in highly organized cooperative packs. Their forays even succeed in taking down very large preys, such as buffaloes, with a success rate so high they're often considered the most effective predators on the African savannah. Hyenas will only scavenge when absolutely necessary.

Spotted Hyenas have such formidable jaws (one of the strongest in the animal kingdom) and teeth that they devour even the bones of their kill. This, combined with their very strong stomach acid, results in them having crusty white droppings (from all the bone meal). The hyena's distinctive laughing call, used to disorient prey and gather the pack, has resulted in their nickname "laughing hyena". Adult females, weighing up to around 72 kilograms (158 lb), are heavier than the males, which are typically 10 kilograms (22 lb) lighter.

Although hyenas look like rather large wild dogs, they make up a separate biological family which is most closely related to Herpestidae (the family of mongooses and meerkats). The hyena has one of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom and an adult of the species has only the lion to fear.

Spotted Hyenas live in the savannas and deserts of Africa, in clans averaging 40 individuals - with some as large as 100. Female Spotted Hyenas are larger than their male counterparts, and socially dominant over them. Males leave their natal group on reaching sexual maturity, while females remain in it; the society is highly structured, with dominance relationship between the matrilines (the groups of females descended from a single mother) that endure for generations.

The female Spotted Hyena's urogenital system is unique among mammals: there is no vagina, and the clitoris is modified so that it is as large, and as erectile, as the male's penis. The female urinates, mates and gives birth through this modified clitoris (it contracts for mating, the opening widening to admit the male's penis). It was thought that the development of this structure depended on a masculinisation process triggered by the action of androgens of the developing female cub before or soon after birth, but it is now ascribed to normal morphogenesis and sexual mimicry. The evolutionary origins of this unique organ are not yet known. Birth through the clitoris is very difficult, and in addition the internal birth canal is contorted because of the unusual geometry of the external organs. In captivity, many cubs of primiparous mothers are stillborn because of the long labour times involved; in the wild, survival rates of females seem to fall sharply around the age of first giving birth, suggesting that the process is hazardous for the mother also.

While Spotted Hyenas have no real predators (besides humans), they are on occasions killed by lions, which eat the same foods and will often clash with hyenas over kills. Although lions are much larger, hyenas will defend their kills if possible, and hyena packs have been known to kill lions if they outnumber them significantly.