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Devious

SilverWordz

on July 1, 2007

This page was very interesting for me because I learned some neat stuff while building it.

While looking at pictures of hyenas the question struck me, are hyenas canine or feline? They seem to have traits of both.

According to wikipedia, they're neither. They're in their own family which is more closely related to meerkats and mongoose. Other interesting facts, they're a female dominant species, the females are even slightly larger than the males.

Not really a surprise but they're amazing scavengers. One of the few species that is fully capable of digesting every part of its prey, including bone.

Anyway, if you want to read more about them, check out the link up above to their wikipedia page.

Kitty Man - Apparently the way it's broken down, under the Order of Carnivora you have Caniformia, Feliformia, and Miacoidea. Canines of course fall into the Superfamily of Caniformia. Under the Superfamily Feliformia (Feliodea/Aeluroidea) you have the familes Eupleridae, Felidae (Felines), Herpestidae (Mongoose), Hyaenidae (Hyena), and Nandiniidae (Civet).

So they belong to the same Superfamily and are closer to felines than canines, but aren't a part of the feline family. And in family relations are closer to civets and mongoose, than felines. I also hear the animal aardwolf come up a lot, which I'd never heard of. I guess its an insect eating hyena!

Two more hugely interesting facts (to me) that I forgot to mention in my post are: some scientists believe the hyena is of equal intelligence to some apes! And they are the most recent addition to the carnivore order, they first hyenas only showing up some ten million years ago.


Thanks so much for the great comments too! And sorry for droning on and on about all this animal stuff. It's just truly fascinating to me.