Hyenas

So, I'm diverting a bit from Argentina to go to Africa... ok, not really. Believe it or not, we have hyenas in Berkeley! Today, our sophomore seminar class went to visit them at the field station in the hills behind campus. These are some of the most amazing beasts I have ever seen, and though I've been privileged to get to visit them fairly often with class field trips, it never ceases to amaze me how cool these guys are, especially for those of us who study hormones and behavior.

The spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) is native to Kenya but for the past 25 years, there's been a colony housed in a large facility above campus. One of their big claims to fame is the high levels of androgens that are present in females, causing masculinization of the genitalia. In other words, the girls don't look much different than the boys! Hyenas live in a female dominated society where the higher you are in rank, the better access to food and other resources you have. Males disperse from their natal colony to seek matings with females from other colonies. The lucky ones get the higher ranked females, whose offspring will inherit the rank of their mom.

The benefits of this abundance of androgens is that females are large and powerful but there are costs too. Birthing cubs is extremely difficult and often, the first cub to be born dies. If more than one cub is born, they come out fighting, sometimes to the death ... having been bathed in utero in this hormone that seems to be associated with aggression. Much of this research has been done using the hyena colony at Berkeley, and in fact, it is the only one of its kind in the world.

Hyenas are fascinating and as much as I would love to pet one, their massive jaws warn me off, especially after watching a demonstration of their ability to crush huge cow bones. Still, the Berkeley hyenas seem to have a playfulness that I can enjoy behind the fence. Their whooping and laughing and chasing one another are fun to watch on any day in Berkeley... as it was today.