Thoughts on Hyena Magic

9/17/13 Edit: As I said, I'll update this from time to time, there's a few more musings.

I'm just going to keep this as a repository for my own experiences and understanding on the most constant influence on my life. The experiences others pick up from Hyena may differ, and even with myself, the personal Striped Hyena influence is a bit more subtle than the Spotted Hyena magic that dominates my experiences.

Hyena magic is Madness. At best, those I've known touched by hyena to be blatantly eccentric, most of us both embrace and struggle with mental illness, substance abuse and sexuality.

Hyena is blunt. We are what we are, and we don't shy away from ourselves.

Hyena is about primal need. Clan, food, sex, sleep, hunt, den.

Hyena has strange compulsions by human standards. For myself, the eating urges illustrate it best, from the slightly odd tendancy to chew bones and eat marrow, to the desire to eat out of the garbage and spoiled or raw food, more desirable because of its undesirability.

Hyena magic is about survival. We get by, no matter what.

More on eating, and it's importance. It is erroneous to compare Hyenas to Wolves. Hyenas compete by being more successful than one another, not generally through direct competition. Although they are noisy and squabble such as to attract all the animals around at a kill, most focus simply on out-eating each other.

Fatness isn't a bad thing, the plumper you are, obviously the better you are surviving. Still, we value a certain level of fitness and grooming in our hunting partners, but in general we have different ideas of what qualifies as attractive compared to the mainstream.

A lot of people assume that the hyena is lazy. The truth is simply that hyenas don't waste our precious time and resources on things that don't matter to us. We don't sweat the small stuff, but people assume we are just as laissez faire in all aspects of our lives, and to the outsider it can look this way. The truth is that while hyenas are very thoughtful and ruminate long on important subjects as they would gnaw a bone, we make our decisions with just a glance.

Our hunting technique is unique. Most predators stalk their prey, striking a surprise ambush attack.

Hyenas just walk right up to the herd, looking it over. We tease them into motion, and as a whole, immediately find a target, and run them to the ground. We do not wait for our prey to fall before we begin devouring them. We are tireless, agile, and coordinated.

Hyenas outperform even chimps at teamwork.

"When a naive animal unfamiliar with the feeding platforms was paired with a dominant, experienced animal, the dominant animals switched social roles and submissively followed the lower-ranking, naive animal. Once the naive animal became experienced, they switched back.

Both the audience and the role-switching trials revealed that spotted hyenas self-adjust their behavior based upon social context."

The key is the Clan, hyena hierarchy is different from typical linear hierarchies. In wolves, pack members eat according to a rigid order of rank. Much of their time is spent reinforcing these roles. Hyenas are more malleable, for one thing, the strictly divided ranks between males and females is excellent. There is less intersexual conflict, even as much as the males are ranked below even the lowest of females. Relationships are still very important, but are much more mutual and beneficial in general. Growing in rank is easier through cooperation and sharing than it is through oppression and dominance. As well, the much larger size of a clan as opposed to a pack has interesting effects on relationships between animals. As much as the larger clan is respected, smaller groups bond more tightly and most hunting parties consist only of 2-4 animals.

When the clan comes together, the stakes are more dire, and such calls to action only happen in times of war, whether the threat is that of lions or a rival clan.

Hyenas don't waste time on fruitless battles. They know when to back off and run, and accept defeat to live again another day. Spotted Hyenas are the most successful predators in africa, 95% of their diet was prey they brought down.

And if you haven't read it, this entry is 100% accurate to my experiences http://totemist.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/my-words-are-my-fangs-thoughts-on-spotted-hyena/