The female hyena calls the shots

Check out hyenas from a Kenyan p.o.v. in an article (featuring Kay) in yesterday's Nation!

http://www.nation.co.ke

Necropsies: a scientist's chore (Warning: This blog contains pictures of blood and guts)

First, a little background:

I am a field scientist, but sometimes I am a wussy field scientist. I find bugs fascinating but, spiders terrify me. I’ll bathe in a crocodile infested river if I have to, but only if the water is clear enough to see the crocs coming. Perhaps my strangest “atypical for a scientist” trait is the fact that I passionately dislike doing necropsies. I am enthralled by the inner workings and details of the animal body, no matter the species, because they all have unique adaptations. I love reading about those adaptations in books and seeing diagrams and even pictures but, when it comes to cutting open an animal and seeing it all for myself, I can’t handle it. It’s not the blood and guts; those don’t bother me. Somehow I manage to freak myself out with the idea that this was once a living breathing animate creature, and now it’s not. I get light headed and nauseous and I am deeply affected by the “smell of death” (whether it’s real or imagined, I’m not sure).

I learned this lesson early on when I had an unexpectedly difficult time dissecting a fetal pig in my high school biology class. That knocked veterinarian off my list of possible “things I want to be when I grow up” and made room for research biologist.

Next, to the story:

On obs one day in December we came across one of our collared females who had been wounded by lions. She was in very bad shape, so bad that she didn’t move when we drove right up to her or when we got out of the car. Unfortunately, in this situation, even if there had been anything we could have done, it would have inappropriate to do so and interfere in the natural process. We resumed obs and by the time we came back to check on her an hour later, she had passed away.

For me, this experience was sobering enough without having to also load her into the car and take her back to camp for a necropsy. As a scientist I completely understand and appreciate the wealth of data that we collect during a necropsy but, I just can’t get excited about helping to perform one. I was in a state of utter dread the entire ride back to camp. I was convinced I was going to throw up, pass out, or both in quick succession. I quickly made my case to Sean and Kasaine and allowed them to take on the jobs of flensing the skull and cutting so that I could maintain my distance from the specimen by doing the paperwork and sample labeling.

Part of the necropsy involves determining the cause of death. That was easy: lions. Lions are the number one cause of death of hyenas and the lions hadn’t left much to the imagination. Our poor females had puncture wounds from claws and teeth in her neck, chest stomach, and inner back leg. One particularly nasty wound on her neck was the probable cause of death and seemed to have been bleeding the most.

Next, we had to take body measurements such as body length, height at the shoulder, leg lengths, and head circumference. Then, Sean cut off the hyena’s head and began flensing the skull. At this point, I mentally checked out. Our last task was to take organ and tissue samples. I focused on labeling my vials for the samples and recording how many of each we collected. After about an hour or so, I was so busy that I forgot to feel sick and light headed. By the end, I was surprised to find that the collection of our last few samples was captivating.

Kasaine had done a fine job locating all the vital organs that we needed to collect samples from, until we reached the sex organs. This is where my junior high and high school sex ed classes, and mammology class came in handy and gave me the advantage. I knew generally where the uterus and ovaries should be and what they should look like, while Kasaine was completely clueless. We located both, dissected the uterus and found a fetus! I realize how strange it is that this was the most exciting part for me and I can’t really explain why I didn’t find it even more depressing to find the fetus. I think it was the exploration of finding the correct organs and confirming our suspicion by finding the fetus itself.

I doubt I’ve completely cured myself of my necropsy handicap but at least I know I can survive them and find something positive in the experience.

What comes of all this field work, anyway?

Readers of this blog may occasionally ask themselves, "What ever becomes of all the information about hyenas these people are collecting in the African bush?" Well, the answer is that we do a lot of different things with the data we collect in the field. For instance, we help the managers of national parks figure out how best to manage hyenas and other large carnivores, we help develop broad conservation strategies for African wildlife, and we also make our results available to our colleagues in the scientific community. Every year we publish a number of papers in professional journals addressing topics in animal behavior, ecology and evolutionary biology. Our most recent paper, which appeared this week in a journal called Behavioral Ecology, attracted the attention of the BBC. This article, which has senior grad student Jenn Smith as the first author, inquires why hyenas sometimes gang up to form aggressive coalitions against their clanmates. Check out the photo feature about our new article on the BBC website at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8485653.stm

An Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I have a real treat for you for the next eight months. At five feet, seven inches and 150 pounds, our newest blogger comes to us from Sacramento, California. This blonde haired, blue-eyed Amazonian queen has had a sundry past with research. Her insatiable appetite for adventure and field work has led to her partcipation in no less than five fact-finding missions. These include (1) an investigation of the broad-winged hawk's ability to recognize the coloration of the venomous coral snake, (2) a delving into the growth rates of invasive plant species, (3) an examination of the sexual communication of the greater sage-grouse, (4) an exploration of the long-necked and pig-nosed turtles of northern Australia, and (5) an analysis of the information encoded within the killer whale's call repertoire.

Her work with sage-grouse has been recognized by the Journal of Experimental Biology. And the Acoustical Society of America was honored to receive her in Paris, where she presented the preliminary results of her groundbreaking work with the orca. In 2008, she afforded the University of California, Davis the privilege of counting her among their alumni.

In the year following her graduation, she had a dark flirtation with environmental consulting and let's just all thank our lucky stars she has returned to the world of research to grace us with her presence.

She enjoys reading, ceramics, photography, and contemplating consciousness and the meaning of life. Her heroes include Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, and Leslie Curren.

It is now my esteemed pleasure to present to you this night, the talented, the amazing, the ever modest, Kenna Lehmann!

Studies of hyena skull development put teeth into new female dominance theory

Holekamp Lab alumni Heather Watts and Jaime Tanner, along with Kay Holekamp and BarbaraLundrigan from the MSU Museum, have recently published a theory regarding female dominance among spotted hyenas in the March 18 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Read the news release here: http://news.msu.edu/story/6091/.

Watch the video: MSU zoology professor Kay Holekamp discusses a new theory connecting female spotted hyena social dominance to the length of time it takes for young hyena skulls to develop to the point where they can compete for food.

Animals have brains too (Part II)

So how can you test hyenas’ intelligence?

First, we tried sitting our hyenas down and giving them IQ tests. Unfortunately, they couldn’t hold the pens, and they ended up eating the test booklets. Back to the drawing board.

Seriously though, in order to be effective, our test had to meet a few criteria. First of all, it had to be hyena-proof. It needed to be something our hyenas couldn’t destroy, consume, or drag away.

The test also had to be something that, even with their limited dexterity, hyenas could manipulate in some way to “solve.”

Finally, the test had to represent a “novel task,” which is scientist-speak for “a challenge the hyenas have never seen before.” This way, we know the hyenas aren't just relying on some skill they already have.

Luckily, clever grad student Sarah Benson-Amram came along and developed a test that meets all these criteria. Called a “puzzle box,” it’s based on an invention by psychologist E.L. Thorndike.

Essentially, it’s a big box made of rebar (and when I say “big”, I mean “BIG…” this thing weighs about 75 pounds). The box has a swinging door that closes and locks with a sliding latch. We put a piece of meat inside the box as an incentive, close and lock the door, and present it to a hyena. Their task is to figure out how to get to open the box and get to the meat inside. Just like a Rubik’s cube or Sudoku puzzle is a brainteaser for us, the puzzle box is a way to test hyenas’ problem-solving abilities.

My favorite thing about watching hyenas interact with the box is the multitude of strategies they employ. Some bite the box; others dig underneath it. A few flip and tumble the box. Some decide that an aerial view will help, so they get on top of the box and peer down. Many hyenas try the “If I lie here and stare at it long enough, it will open” strategy. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen this one work yet.

Sarah spent an amazing amount of time and effort developing the box and working out the kinks. During Sarah’s research, 9 Mara hyenas (out of 58 who tried) opened the box. On average, a hyena needed to work on the box three different times before they could open it. One smarty-pants, Snaggletooth, got so good at the task that he was able to open the box in 3 seconds; Kent, shown below, could do it in 5 seconds.

I'm now doing some work with the box here at Serena. While all this just the tip of the iceberg, it’s certainly a promising – and interesting – way to look at animals’ intelligence.