Post #13946

Brown Hyena: A little known species. Soaked in carrion and eating things that others can’t even smell Our hero is a creepy freak who wanders around the desert in search of the meaning of life and someone's bones. He does not observe the customs of his family, does not like to hunt and looks like a living denial of everything beautiful and noble. The brown hyena is shaggy, always smelling of something dubious. It frankly does not fit into the glossy picture of wildlife from TV documentaries. But it is precisely this strategy that helps her reign where tough and powerful predators are afraid to even look. The brown hyena is considered one of the largest land scavengers - the shaggy thing grows up to 80 centimeters at the withers and weighs more than 40 kilograms. From a distance, it can be mistaken for a stooping dog: when the hyena is not in a good mood, the 30-centimeter shaggy hairs on its back stand on end without any varnish or ironing. But don’t be fooled: these animals are stocky and strong, with powerful jaws and huge teeth. Even cubs can crush bones with ease! True, this does not make their prey cold or hot: the diet of the brown hyena consists almost entirely of carrion of varying degrees of freshness. Thanks to their phenomenal sense of smell, hyenas find the dead at a distance of up to several kilometers. And it’s not scary if someone has already feasted on the carcass: concentrated gastric juice will help digest even bare bones and skin - something that usually makes all other meat-eaters turn up their noses. Specific gastronomic preferences allowed brown hyenas to squeeze out a huge piece of land in southern Africa. They reign in deserts and semi-deserts, among bare rocks and hot earth. There is no food or water here. But for hyenas this is their home. They replace the water with the remaining moisture from the found carcasses. And so that the merciless sun does not bake the head, the main scavengers of Africa come out mainly at night. For all their dubious reputation, brown hyenas do work, without which the desert would quickly turn into a cemetery. In conditions of extreme heat and dryness, the remains can lie for weeks, or even months. Without sanitation workers, they would accumulate, contaminating the environment. Hyenas destroy everything to the last bone, performing dirty, thankless, but vital work. In places where habitats intersect with other predators, the hyena behaves extremely impudently, completely forgetting about its gentle and misunderstood soul. The beast raises its fur and launches a frontal attack. Using jet propulsion, out of arrogance, dementia and courage, she manages to take prey from wild dogs, cheetahs and even leopards. Animals go out on raids alone, but brown hyenas live in packs. And even here they distinguished themselves. Instead of the matriarchal dictatorship usual for hyenas, everything with browns is much more modest and calm. Their get-together is called a clan and is more remin