Brt!!!

In spotted hyenas there is a behavior we call "bristle tail". Bristle tail occurs when a hyena gets excited, and is defined as "having the tail lifted and vertically bristled like a bottlebrush". We often see it in aggressive interactions, but a bristle-tailed hyena is not always on the attack. It also happens to be my favorite behavior to see, especially in cubs! But we'll get to that in a second.

Abid giving a wonderful example of the bristle tail

A fabulous curled variation of bristle tail

When we see this behavior in the hyenas, we make a note of it in the transcription using the abbreviation "brt". So for example we might have:

NANO brt app JLT, eb bo

This means that Nano bristle tail approached Jolteon, who put his ears back and backed off in case Nano's brt meant she was overly excited and going to mess with him. We see brting in all of our hyenas, from our high ranking females to our immigrant males, even all the way down to cubs! And that's the best part. 

Cubs usually bristle tail when there is a particularly good scrap of food worth fighting over at the den, and it's my absolute favorite thing to see.  

Their tails have not quite gotten to bottlebrush quality this early in their development, so often it's just a straight up little toothpick of a tail. Seeing the cubs exhibit these behaviors so young is such a treat, and beyond that fact it just looks adorable! 

It's also a great behavior to exemplify how cubs can boss around hyenas that are older than them! Below you can see Jort bristle tailing while standing up to Magenta, an adult female that is eight years older than Jort!

The cubs of higher ranking females often will aggress on lower rankers, even if the cubs are much younger than the individuals they are aggressing on.

I  hope this post did a good job of introducing you to the wonderful world of bristle-tailing, I love being able to share my favorite behavior!

Til next time! Brt!!!