The hyena: the not-so-evil environment cleaner

GASEBALWE SERETSE
Staff Writer | Tuesday August 31, 2010 00:00

 

According to Tswana beliefs, the witches and wizards prefer to ride the animal during their nocturnal activities despite some of them having more convenient modes of transport.

Horrifying stories of hyena being spotted clad in curious accessories have cemented the belief that hyenas indeed accompany witches during the night.

It is because of these suspicions that the hyena is not a friend to most Batswana and whenever the animal is seen not far from a village, it is believed that it is on an evil assignment. 

In the process the purported nocturnal escapades of the hyena has earned it some bad names such as setinikwane and thokwalatsela. It is therefore not surprising to see that superstitious Batswana believe that a good hyena is a dead one.

According to the Out of Africa website, in ancient Egypt, hyenas were domesticated, fattened and eaten. In turn humans have also on occasion become food for hyenas.

In Sotho-Tswana culture, if somebody died, the young ones were told that he had been snatched by the hyena. At times, when a child was naughty, he was told that the hyena would snatch him.

In Botswana, hyenas, like most predators are hardly eaten but according to a source, traditional doctors and witches may kill a hyena to harvest its parts for muti or traditional medicine.

As if that is not enough, in folk tales hyenas are portrayed as the jackasses of the story. He is the anti-hero who messes up everything for everyone including himself. In one story that sought to highlight how stupid he is, one day Hare was caught by the Boers after he cheated them out of their hard-earned cash. The Boers decided to put him in a box and left him to suffer before throwing him into a nearby lake. As he was agonizing in the box, he heard Hyena passing and started singing: ì would rather die than get married to a fat, ugly Boer girl.'

Hyena who could not believe his 'luck' since he badly wanted to get married to a white girl quickly agreed to swap places with Hare and as a result, he  died a terrible death because of his foolishness.

According to Wikipedia, three of the four species of the hyena are restricted to sub-Saharan Africa where they live in environments such as savannah, bush land and desert. Wikipedia further says that all living species are hunters and scavengers. They have extremely strong jaws in relation to their body size and have a very powerful digestive system with highly acidic fluids making them capable of eating and digesting their entire prey including skin, teeth, horn and bones.

Although people view hyenas as cowardly and timid, experts say they can be bold, dangerous, attacking both animals and humans.

There are four species of the hyena native to both the African and the Asian continents. These consist of the stripped hyena, the brown hyena, the spotted hyena and the aardwolf.

One of the myths about hyenas is that they are hermaphrodites and they can change their sex at will but this has been proven wrong by experts.

Hyenas can grow 28 to 35 inches tall and weigh anything from 90 to 190 pounds.

The hyena like his fellow 'villain', the vulture are credited for helping cleaning the environment by eating all carcasses that it comes across. Although the hyena has more often than not been portrayed in a bad light, there is a positive  Setswana idiom, that says: Phiri o rile ga bose gangwe loosely meaning there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, an intimation that supposedly comes from the bad hyena himself.

What can one say except that perhaps Mister Hyena is not such a bad fellow after all.