Vomiting. There, I said it. Now lets talk about it hyena style.
For animals that are known for their bone cracking abilities, and can level a carcass to nearly nothing in a matter of minutes, I always think it’s a funny sight to see the things that they can’t digest (usually some shards of bone and hair of their prey).
And although at first vomiting may seem like a normal occurrence for animals that can bite off more than they can chew and eat up to a third of their body weight in a single sitting, when it happens in the field, we record it.
As gross as it may sound, when one of our hyenas vomits, we need to note it because it becomes a new food source. This new food source is something to fight for, snatch up, or even my personal favorite, roll in it. Nothing like adding a little Eau de "Crocuta" to really make you irresistible to the ladies.
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5 comments:
Laugh out loud funny!! Great post Dave and I love the picture. Have you ever found any man made objects in hyena horff? Who is that overstuffed hyena? I want her photo on my after dinner t-shirt.
Nothing like the scent of vomit to let you know who the real players are =)
Yes, I think partly why I like biologists (esp. wildlife/etc.) is that it's hard to be full of pretense when you've been pooped on & peed on many times by many species, dissected owl pellets (i.e. owl barf), stared closely at poop to figure out whose it is, even what species lie therein, etc. =)
I have yet to see man made stuff come out, but wouldn't be at all surprised. Especially in our clans that border the Reserve and are coming into contact with more people, it's pretty inevitable. I believe the overstuffed one is Bartlett, from our Serena-South clan. Once again, she was quite huge the other day...qualifying as what we call "obese."
I have found bottle caps and a zipper in hyena puke before.
I once found some Maasai beads in hyena poop before, which was a little disconcerting
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