Introduction: Generally speaking, different cultures have different views on the same animal, or there are always some differences. But none of the cultures that came into contact with the spotted hyena said they were good.
Compared to lions, spotted hyenas do not seem to have a good reputation on the African savannah. is impossible to see directly.
What's even more confusing is that it's hard to tell the gender of the spotted hyena from its appearance, because the female spotted hyena actually grows the same genitals as the male, which made scientists once thought they were hermaphrodites guys .
So the question is, why did female spotted hyenas evolve male organs? How does this body structure reproduce?
1. Princes on the grasslands: Spotted Hyena
When most people see the name of Spotted Hyena, they will take it for granted that they may be canids, and they really look like dogs. But the spotted hyena does not belong to the canid family, but a species under the hyena family. In terms of kinship, the hyena family is closer to the civet cat .
Hyenas used to be quite prosperous, they were all over Eurasia and America, and there were some big ones. However, giant hyenas did not get along well with ancient humans, which may be one of the important reasons for their extinction.
There are only four species left under the Hyena family today, besides the spotted hyena, there are brown hyena , yellow hyena and coyote .Among them, the spotted hyena is the largest and most ferocious species. It is mainly distributed in Africa and forms a competitive relationship with predators such as lions and cheetahs.
At first glance, you may think that spotted hyenas look like dogs, but they are very different from dogs. Spotted hyenas have long front legs and short back legs. They are " front-wheel drive" guys , which is the opposite of most carnivores " rear-wheel drive ", and the spotted hyena has a prominent mane on its neck.
"Front-wheel drive" means that spotted hyenas can't leap on their prey like lions can, slam it down, and then choke their throats, but that doesn't prevent spotted hyenas from becoming the second-best predators on African grasslands after lions. A single spotted hyena can only hunt small animals, but they tend to act in groups, and the strength of the group allows the spotted hyena to capture prey several times larger than itself, such as bison, wildebeest , etc.
Spotted hyenas like to attack from the rear of their prey, which is the so-called "anal digging". The hips and abdomen are the most vulnerable parts of herbivores. Spotted hyenas attack here is a wise predation strategy. Most of the prey remains motionless when the spotted hyena "digs out the anus", mainly because the prey is already exhausted and cannot move after being bitten, otherwise the intestines will be torn out.
Although spotted hyenas hunt and kill living things, they also like carrion, and they like carrion to the point of not rejecting any corpse, including the same kind, and even have a bad habit of "picking people's graves". Spotted hyenas have powerful teeth, and with their bite force stronger than that of lions, they can crush the bones of their prey and suck the marrow inside.
They also have a super creepy voice - they make a sneer-like sound when they are excited to share their food, and they also make a sneer-like sound during the estrus season, and they can travel a long distance. It's so hard not to have nightmares if this guy hangs around your house at night.
is even more confusing, you can hardly see the gender of hyena ,Not only do males and females look equally ugly, they even have similar genitals, and even female genitals can erect, so that scientists once believed that hyenas were androgynous animals. Therefore, for a long time, people thought that spotted hyenas were a group of wretched animals that only knew how to eat carrion.
Because of prejudice against spotted hyenas, it wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that it was discovered that they were actually very good hunters. It's just that they chase their prey at night, and some people find them watching the corpse to eat in the morning, and mistakenly think that they are eating the picked corpse. In fact, they capture nearly 70% of their food and are unmistakable predators.
In short, from the aesthetic and moral point of view of human beings, spotted hyenas are very disgusting in appearance and living habits. They are ugly in appearance, scary in voice, and disgusting in food. They are really unlikable.
2. Why do female spotted hyenas have male organs?
In 2014, Daejeon City, South Korea presented two spotted hyenas to Maruyama Zoo in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, and South Korea said they were a pair. After Japan received the spotted hyenas, they intentionally let them breed, but two years later, the two spotted hyenas did not move at all.
So the zoo staff did a B-ultrasound for the spotted hyena, trying to find out what went wrong, and the result was unexpected: both spotted hyenas were male! As we mentioned above, it is difficult to tell the gender of a spotted hyena from its appearance, as the female spotted hyena has the same organs as the male.
When the Koreans said that the two spotted hyenas were male, the Japanese never questioned this, nor did they conduct a careful inspection, and it turned out to be a joke. In fact, the female spotted hyena's organs are slightly different, the male is longer, thinner, and has a pointed head.
But female spotted hyenas grow almost the same organs as males,It's really incredible, why did they evolve such a unique structure? At present, there are several hypotheses:
1. Female spotted hyenas contain a lot of androgen, which helps them maintain a high status
A group of spotted hyenas usually consists of 5 to 90 spotted hyenas Hyenas are composed of females, and they will never leave the group in their entire lives, and they are also related to each other. Male spotted hyenas are expelled when they become adults, and they have to go to other groups to live in order to avoid inbreeding.
Unlike the male lion being the king, the leader of the spotted hyena group is held by the female. The status of the male spotted hyena is very low. Their feeding order is not only after the female, but even after their own offspring, and can only eat all day Some leftovers are cold.
Female spotted hyenas are able to occupy the dominant niche mainly because they are larger and more aggressive. And that's largely thanks to male hormones in females, who have the same high levels of testosterone as males.
So when female spotted hyenas are gestation, high levels of testosterone are passed through the placenta to both male and female offspring, allowing pups of both sexes to exhibit high levels of male characteristics during gestation. This means that female spotted hyenas have male organs from birth.
2. Female spotted hyenas have evolved male organs, which may be related to the social background within the group The competition between them is also greater, after all, the males are smaller and do not pose too much threat to the females. Then under this premise,Female spotted hyenas may show strong aggression towards their sisters when they are young.
That is to say, in the same litter of spotted hyena cubs, the females fight more fiercely with each other. But if female spotted hyenas evolve to have nearly the same appearance as males in pups, they are likely to be considered males by other females, reducing the likelihood of being attacked.
In addition, in addition to the fight between sisters, adult female spotted hyenas also have the habit of killing female pups born by other members, which can reduce future competitors. When a spotted hyena pup is born, males and females are basically identical. The sexes can only be distinguished by means of molecular testing; male and female genitalia are indistinguishable at this time. After infancy, the physical similarity between males and females gradually decreases.
In other words, female spotted hyenas have evolved male organs, mainly to minimize fights with sisters and avoid being killed by adult females during pups.
3. So how do they breed?
The estrus period of female spotted hyenas is generally only 14 days. During this period, they can be in close contact with different males one or more times in succession to improve the conception rate.
Although female spotted hyenas have external organs similar to males, their internal urogenital system is more traditionally female, and female spotted hyenas still breed in utero.
We mentioned earlier that the female spotted hyena has slightly different organs from the male, the male is thinner, longer, and has a pointed head. If the male organ is likened to a steel bar, then the female is a slightly thicker steel pipe, which can produce offspring.
This characteristic of female spotted hyenas has the added benefit of being incapable of forcing females to engage in intimacy by males. If the female is unwilling, the male cannot reproduce with the female at all,That is to say, females have mastered the reproductive initiative, which is also beneficial for them to maintain a higher ecological niche.
The structure of the female spotted hyena's genitals brings them great benefits, but they also come at a huge cost. The female organ is a tubular passage with a diameter of only 2.5 centimeters, and the passage of spotted hyena pups weighing 1.0 to 1.5 kilograms can cause great distress to the female when they are born and pass through it.
And, for first-time mothering females, birth-induced mortality is unusually high. It wasn't much better for the pups, who often detached from the placenta and got stuck in the ducts, eventually dying from lack of oxygen.
The gestation period of spotted hyenas is about 110 days, and they usually give birth in burrows. Small spotted hyenas can see things as soon as they are born. When the mother spotted hyena is out hunting, the baby spotted hyena will stay in the burrow all the time, and only come out of the burrow when it hears the call of the mother. After a month and a half, the little spotted hyena's mane began to grow. After 4 months, they will develop the same spots as adult spotted hyenas.
In short, spotted hyenas are not hermaphrodites. Female spotted hyenas have similar external organs to males, but their internal reproductive system is complete, but their production process is more painful. Whether it is the female itself or the cubs that are being produced, the mortality rate is high. very high.
4. Conclusion
From a human point of view, spotted hyenas are disgusting in many ways.
Female spotted hyenas grow organs similar to males, probably in order to obtain a higher ecological niche in the group. This structure does allow females to have the initiative in reproduction, as well as the priority to eat, and their status in the group taller than males.
In fact, the living habits of the spotted hyena, the way of preying by digging the anus, etc. are all wise survival strategies. It has to be said that the spotted hyena is a species that has evolved very successfully.
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