The Lenten diet of hyenas

[Steve Hayes]

How do hyenas observe Lent? By eating more donkey. (+video)

As Ethopian Christians give up meat and dairy for Lent, hyenas are forced to
switch from scavenging to hunting, a new study has found.

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer / April 5, 2012

Humans aren't the only ones who give up certain foods for Lent. In the 55 days
before Easter in Ethiopia, hyenas are forced to turn from scavenging to
hunting to make up for Christians' fasting traditions.

Observant Ethiopian Christains give up meat and dairy for Lent, and it appears
some spotted Hyenas are observing the religious holiday, too, by adjusting
their diets to find the protein they can no longer get from trash cans.

Members of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church give up meat and dairy during the Lent
period in Ethiopia. Now, a new study of hyena droppings finds that local
hyenas, deprived of butcher scraps during this time period, supplement their
diets by hunting donkeys for food instead.

Spotted hyenas are adept hunters, capable of bringing down prey such as
zebras, wildebeests and even young rhinoceroses. But these pack hunters are
also adaptable: They scavenge freely, devouring everything from dead birds and
mammals to garbage and dung.

"Hyenas can eat almost any organic matter, even putrid carrion and
anthrax-infected carcasses," study researcher Gidey Yirga of Mekelle
University in Ethiopia said in a statement. "They are capable of eating and
digesting all parts of their prey except hair and hooves. Bones are digested
so completely that only the inorganic components are excreted in the hyena's
droppings."

Knowing that hyenas scavenge from human garbage, Yirga and his colleagues
investigated whether human diet changes influence what hyenas eat. They
focused on Lent, collecting hyena droppings from three sites in Northern
Ethiopia on the first and last days of Abye Tsome, or Lent, and then again 55
days after the fast ended. The result was a collection of 553 individual
droppings.

An analysis of the scat showed that hyenas turned to a diet of donkey as
humans gave up butchering meat. Before Lent, 14.8 percent of hyena droppings
contained donkey hair. During Lent, that number increased to 33.1 percent,
dropping again to 22.2 percent once Lent ended and butcher scraps again
appeared around human settlements.

The results, published today (April 4) in the Journal of Animal Ecology,
illustrate how adaptable and opportunistic hyenas are, according to the
researchers. They also show how intertwined the lives of humans and hyenas
really are — a fact that could have implications for how hyena-human conflict
should be managed.

"Understanding details of the foraging behavior of carnivores in an
anthropogenic environment can help reveal specific causes of conflict, leading
to better strategies for reducing availability of anthropogenic food and
preventing conflict," Yirga said.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0405/How-do-hyenas-observe-Lent-By-eating-more-donkey.-video



--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk