Cub Cuteness

I have made it to the Mara!  Yay!  Sadly, we have been getting way too much rain to get out for hyena observations (commonly called just "obs" by us).  Instead, I want to share some old cub photos I have from my last stay here in Kenya.  Because, honestly, the internet has plenty of cute kittens and puppies and a serious shortage of baby hyenas.



 Everyone loves cute hyenas cubs. These guys are Talek West kids.  I'm looking forward to seeing one or two of these kids all grown up (some even with cubs of their own!!!).

Teen Moms and Koi's Female Army

Eremet (Pike's daughter) and Pike with their four little black cubs. Chakram and Trebuchet (Pike's cubs) are the front most and back most cubs with the white eyebrows. Spyro and Falkor (Erem's cubs/Pike's grandcubs) are the two smaller black cubs in between Chak and Treb (nursing from Eremet). 

It’s cub season now and all three clans have very active communal dens. Most of the cubs are around 3 months old now and are showing their spots as well as their personalities. This year Koi, Happy Zebra Clan's former alpha, would have been the grandmother to 2-4 new cubs and the great grandmother to 5-7 new cubs if she hadn’t been killed by a lion a few years ago. When Pike took the matriarchy after her mother’s death she started a tradition of teen moms or “babies having babies” as we’ve been calling it. Most female hyenas won’t have cubs until they’re over 3 years old and many not until they’re 4 or 5 (lower ranking hyenas tend to wait longer before having their first cubs). Pike was only 3 years old when she took the matriarchy and she already had two cubs Boomerang and Katana when she was 2 years old.

Arbalet, Boomerang, and Boomerang's two new 3-4 week old cubs RumG and Plank. 

KOI - f (died 02Jun11)

            PIKE (30Oct07) – f

                        TREB (09Dec13) - ?

                        CHAK (09Dec13) - ?

                        CLAY (23Jan13) – f

                        ARBA (26Sep11) – f

                                    TULA (?) - ?

                        EREM (26Sep11) – f

                                    SPYR (22Dec13) - ?

                                    FLKR (22Dec13) - ?

                        BOOM (16Feb10) – f

                                    RUMG (14Nov13) - ?

                                    PLNK (14Nov13) - ?

                                    SWAG (23Oct12) – m

                                    JLYR (23Oct12) – f

                        KATA (16Feb10) – m

            SNAP (30Oct07) – f

                        MOJI (5Nov12) – f

            COEL (31Aug10) – f

Above: The linear hierarchy for Happy Zebra clan (only showing Koi’s descendants). Birthdays are in parentheses followed by sex. Offspring are tabbed once underneath their mothers. 

Boomerang and Plank.

Now, at 6 years old she has already had five cubs, four girls and one boy. Her son Katana (now 4 years old) is in the process of dispersal and we’ve seem him hanging out with both south and north hyenas. Katana’s littermate Boomerang was our second teen mom, giving birth to two cubs when she was 2 years old. This year she’s 3 and already has another two cubs who are growing up big and strong. Boomerang’s younger sisters are also, to our amazement following tradition, teen moms for the first time this year. Eremet has two cubs and Arbalet has one.

Plank, Boomerang's cub, was very explorative from a very young age.

Claymore, Pike’s youngest daughter at 1 year old, seems very confused by the sudden switch from being the baby of the family to almost completely ignored. Her two older sisters Arbalet and Eremet used to be her constant playmates and with Pike as her mother she was the clan’s princess. Now her mother and older sisters all have new babies. Most hyena cubs nurse for over a year, but Pike’s family seems to have no problem getting more than enough to eat and all of them are having new cubs every

year, meaning Clay was actually weaned at a little less than one year old. She doesn’t seem too happy but Clay has plenty to eat, just no more milk.

Boomerang carrying Plank back to the den. 

For comparison to Pike’s “baby making machine” family her take a look at her littermate Snapper and her younger sister Coelacanth. Snapper in this same time period has had only one surviving cub, Mojito. Coel finally had her first two cubs this year but we're not sure they survived. We also think Snapper has new cubs this year but we haven’t seen them yet. If I were to post the entire linear hierarchy for the entire clan you would see that Koi’s descendants make up almost half the clan! Considering their high rate of reproduction in the last 4 years this isn’t surprising.

Boomerang nursing RumG and nuzzling Plank. 

Old and New Favorites

Awhile ago I wrote a blog professing my undying love for the immigrant male Rough and Ready but I never got around to posting photos of his lovely spots. So here he is! my handsome hyena boyfriend! (he's the one on the left)Since it took me so long to get these up here I thought I'd throw in the added bonus of my new favorite cub. He started out with the cub name "Jay" and it has taken us months to see him nurse and finally confirm who is mother is. Now that we know he belongs to Hendrix (shoe lineage) we have dubbed him Puma. He has a lovely little black face, much blacker than all the other cubs, and he has the uncanny ability to sneak scraps away from carcasses.
Even though he is one of the lowest ranking hyenas in the clan, he holds his own and won't let anyone steal those scraps from him. Here he is with tuft of wildebeest beard that he carried around all morning the other day.

Eye Issues

This poor little guy is one of our new den cubs in Talek West. His left eye appears to blind in much the same way that Jin from Fig Tree was blind. We have not seen Jin in months so we assume he has passed on to hyena heaven (yes, of course there is a hyena heaven). He seems to be doing ok at the den so far with one eye but we will have to keep you posted on how he does when he graduates from the den and starts spending time out in the big world. We are all curious to find out who his mom is because her rank may determine whether he survives to adulthood. For now we have dubbed him with the cub name Elk and we have a sneaky suspicion that he is sibling to another unknown cub we have temporarily named Moose.

UPDATE: Elk is in fact Vanity, cub to Argon. Unfortunately Argon is pretty low ranking so Vanity may have to be pretty aggressive and assert all the dominance he has over his sibling Moose (now Avarice) in order to survive.

NSS Episode Three: Moving Day

In a land where Elf (the dominant female) is queen, and clashes with lions are the norm, we bring you a clan. Located between the beautiful Oz Valley and the famous Mara River, this is where the drama unfolds. Known to many as “fisi,” we just call them “North.”

This is the North Side Story.

Episode 3: “Moving Day”

All of the fan mail, post cards, and requests for autographs have really gotten to our cast members of the North Side Story. Just the other day, they decided that the current den they were living in was not receiving the spotlight as well as it should have.

Abandoned den with new resident mongoose.

Thus, they moved to a den that would garner just a little more attention.

Ok, they moved to a den that would encourage a whole new fan base. They moved to a den that is right off the main road near Serena Lodge. Now every tourist, visitor, and guest of the Mara Conservancy can’t go a single day without acknowledging our new blog-stars.

New den just off the main road.

My guess is next week we’ll see them on MTV-cribs. Hopefully they’ll make sure to clean up nicely before the film crews arrive.