The spotted hyena is one out of four in the biological group Hyaenidae. (Now I’m sounding smart!)
Although phylogenetically (evolutionary) closer to cats, hyenas are behaviourally and morphologically (structurally) similar to dogs in several ways; both hyenas and dogs are nonarboreal (don’t climb trees), cursorial (adapted for running) hunters that catch prey with their teeth rather than claws. (Shooo now the internet is making me seem very clever.)
But this I do know, in the spotted hyena, unlike the other hyenas, the female is bigger than the male… Amazonian she is… The rear hyena is a female…
Urogenital anatomy of the female spotted hyena.
In terms of their external genitalia, spotted hyenas are the most highly ‘masculinized’ extant female mammals. Female spotted hyenas display a fused scrotum, rather than the labia majora of a typical female mammal. The hypertrophied clitoris is similar in form to the male penis, and both female and male spotted hyenas display erections – often in the nonsexual context of ‘meeting ceremonies’ (from http://www.vet.cornell.edu/labs/place/docs/2006Glickmanetal.pdf just in case you want to read more)
WHAT????… it is saying that the female has a penis like protrusion so don’t go guessing the sex from that… I won’t go into the complicated description of sexual behaviour of the animals, but suffice it to say this female wears the pants and only one lucky male will get to cover her… talk about a woman on testosterone…
The only other time I’ve seen hyena performing like these were, was after a territorial battle… and as there were hyena running off away from this pack, I assume that was the case again…
This lot must have been victorious as such friendly play is a form of bonding and strengthening the family unit…
They ran around in all directions and one even wanted to chew on our plastic bumper of the van… but this was all victorious play and family bonding and there was even mock sexual acts… (two males..)
More hyena photos to come… just some portrait photos when they posed for me…
The Photographic Journey of bulldog. 