There’s no escaping it ‐ some creatures just make our skin crawl. But why? Do hyenas really deserve their unsavoury reputation? Are vultures actually any less worthy of our admiration than prettier, cuddlier species? And what about spiders and snakes: is it fair to brand them the terrorists of the natural world, masterminding their very own axis of evil? Mike Unwin presents the case for the defence.
 Ugly, cowardly, thieving, disgusting…
we have few words of praise for hyenas. Even as avowed animal lovers, we love to shudder our revulsion at these remarkable carnivores. We even do so with pride, as though our preference for ‘noble’ lions or ‘cute’ meerkats somehow proves our impeccable taste.
It’s not only hyenas which elicit this kind of reaction, of course. Our distaste extends to many other creatures, including vultures, snakes, bats, rats and spiders. But do all these animals really deserve our enmity? And what does our attitude towards them say about us?
In the case of hyenas, we take issue with their feeding habits, the thought of scavenging a decaying carcass being too much for our delicate sensibilities. For hyenas, of course, this behaviour is not a moral choice but simply a way of life – and one for which they are supremely adapted, with their formidable bone-splintering jaws and the kind of digestive juices that can tackle the most putrid flesh. In the process, they do a vital bush waste disposal job. Disgusting? Hyenas might well say the same about anyone with a penchant for pot noodles.
We’re not too keen, either, on hyenas’ appetite for the sick, injured, elderly and newborn. But ‘cowardly’? Hardly. This is simply canny opportunism. In fact, hyenas – and this is where the stereotype breaks down – are actually highly efficient hunters that can use teamwork and stamina to capture prey as large as eland. By weeding out the weak, they help strengthen the gene pool of their prey species. Big cats such as lions, whose reputed ‘bravery’ earns them iconic status, are also adept at snatching a weakling or scavenging a carcass. Indeed, those hyenas you see hanging around a kill while the pride of lions gorge themselves, may actually have done the hard work and then lost their hard-won prize to the thieving cats.
The truth is, of course, that value-laden terms such as ‘cowardly’ and ‘thieving’ are irrelevant to lions, hyenas or any other predator. These animals, like all others, are simply employing the survival skills and strategies with which evolution has equipped them.
Our revulsion reflects our anthropomorphic compulsion to imbue other species with the qualities by which we judge ourselves. We slap a moral code on the bush and it gives us our goodies and baddies. Just take a look at Disney’s Lion King for our verdict on hyenas.
An anthropomorphic approach should, at least, be a little more even-handed. Hyenas have many redeeming qualities: subtle communication skills that could be described as ‘intelligent’ and ‘democratic’; devoted parenting that looks suspiciously like ‘caring’ and ‘selfless’, and a matriarchal clan structure that could even qualify as ‘politically correct’. Contrast this with the ‘idle’, ‘selfish’, ‘bullying’ lions, whose males frequently kill their own cubs. And as for bravery? Well, a leopard – that reputedly ‘courageous’ predator – will abandon its kill to a single hyena rather than risk a scrap.
The beauty myth
So if hyenas are morally beyond reproach, do we hate them because they’re ‘ugly’? This path also has many pitfalls, partly because it’s an objectionable philosophy, but also because we have no objective yardstick of beauty for the animal kingdom. Who’s to say that a leopard, for instance, is better looking than a hyena? Each is built for a different job. The hyena’s long-necked, sloping physique, which may appear unbalanced in comparison to a cat’s, is explained by the musculature required for powering those jaws. We don’t have a problem with this shape in bears, but then bears are ‘cuddly’, not ‘cowardly’ (at least, the Disney ones are).
Run this rule over the familiar safari cast and you’ll find a similar aesthetic applies across the board. Wildebeest, for instance, are perceived as ‘ungainly’, whereas kudu are ‘graceful’. In fact, wildebeest are among the best movers of all antelope, with a uniquely energy-efficient gait, but their unbalanced-looking frame denies them obvious aesthetic appeal. OK, so we may not hate wildebeest, but few tears are shed when we see them butchered by predators or swept away in the current as they cross a flooded river. However, cries of “Shame!” inevitably greet the demise of a ‘magnificent’ kudu.
An expressive face helps too. Both hyenas and wildebeest lack this, since their eyes are hard to make out. Big cats, by contrast, have eyes framed by white markings – an adaptation both for communication and night vision – which accentuate their expressions and can suggest whatever emotions their human observers wish to infer. Many big-eyed animals also retain a life-long baby appeal (even baby hyenas are ‘cute’). Among the species which bring out the maternal instincts in us are small antelope such as steenbok, whose Bambi-like charms (Disney again) are enhanced by a pre-orbital scent gland in front of each eye. Bush babies are famously wide-eyed and ‘adorable’; no matter that they habitually urinate on their hands. Eyelashes alone work wonders for giraffes. By contrast, few small-eyed animals – such as ‘stupid’, ‘ill-tempered’ rhinos – elicit the same warmth of affection.
But if we must judge by appearances, then we need to get it right. The hippopotamus, that safari favourite and cuddly character of a thousand children’s stories, is actually an aggressive animal that is given to violent territorial conflict. Its avuncular image is down to the apparent ‘smile’ formed by the line of the animal’s closed mouth (a PR trick that works well for dolphins, too). Game guides are fond of pointing out that hippos are responsible for more human deaths than any other mammal in Africa. But hey, at least they’re always smiling.
Feathered foes
Our judgemental approach is not confined to mammals. Among birds of prey, for instance, ‘magnificent’ eagles are used as national emblems, while ‘ugly’ vultures are reviled as emblems only of death and greed. The explanation is straightforward: eagles, of course, hunt live prey, whereas vultures are ‘cowardly’ scavengers. But again this distinction simply doesn’t hold up: the tawny eagle is among several African species with a taste for carrion, while the fish eagle – another icon – habitually robs goliath herons and other fish eaters of their catch.
Ironically, despite their foul reputation, vultures are unusually clean birds that bathe daily and preen meticulously, mindful of health hazards posed by soiled plumage. By contrast, hole-nesters such as kingfishers and bee-eaters, whose dazzling feathers earn them universal admiration, are among the filthiest birds – their stinking nests befouled with droppings and their plumage crawling with lice. Beauty, again, sweeps all before it.
Superstition
Hyenas don’t help their cause by being creatures of the night. We diurnal humans have always feared darkness and find many nocturnal animals sinister. The most detested are surely bats, which make up 35 per cent of all Africa’s mammal species. Their invisible fluttering flight may elicit abject horror in some, but the truth is we have very little to fear from these fascinating animals. The bat-tangled-in-hair scenario is just a myth, precluded by their amazing ability to navigate by echolocation. In fact bats can be extremely useful, pollinating plants and consuming vast quantities of mosquitoes and other troublesome insects. We should be cheering them on.
Culture turns our fears into superstition. These vary around the world. In much of Africa, for instance, owls are associated with witchcraft, while in the West they are synonymous with wisdom. Chameleons, those harmless lizards with an impressive set of party tricks (swivelling eyes, prehensile tongue, ability to change colour), are regarded as agents of evil all over the continent. Then again, we in the West are just as prone to the irrational. And it’s not just arachnophobia: I once worked for the boss of a children’s publisher who was so terrified of peacocks that she refused to allow their depiction in any of her books.
Poisoned reputations
But surely there are solid rational reasons behind our fear of certain animals? Many, after all, can be deadly.
This is true, but with certain caveats. Take snakes: of Africa’s 400-plus species, only about 30, including various mambas, cobras and adders, are potentially dangerous to people. The rest are harmless, and many are very useful in controlling rodents and other pests. And even the biggest and most feared species, such as the black mamba, would rather avoid us: we are not prey, and they risk their life in attacking us.
The trouble is that all snakes are tarred with the same brush, and have been since the Bible. Thus we react with panic at the sight of those gleaming coils, despite the fact that their owner may be a harmless house snake or bush snake. And fear is the enemy of fact: in Swaziland, for instance, any green snake is commonly assumed to be a venomous green mamba, even though this species doesn’t actually occur in the country.
The same is true with invertebrates. A few, such as the so-called ‘black button’ spiders (Latrodectus species) and scorpions of the Parabuthus genus, can do some serious mischief if provoked. Many others, such as Scolopendros centipedes, are best avoided. But whilst it is unwise to be blasé, we should nonetheless remember that the majority of creepy-crawlies pose no threat and that even the ‘nasty’ ones do their best to avoid us. Unfortunately we tend to waste our fear on innocuous beasts, especially large or colourful ones, such as the dreaded king cricket Ibanasidus vittatus, known to Johannesburg residents as the ‘Parktown prawn’.
Reasons to be fearful
The invertebrates that do real damage are generally not much to look at, and include various species of fly, tick and other carriers of disease. Most significant are mosquitoes, which are responsible for the spread of yellow fever, dengue fever, West Nile virus and, of course, malaria. The last of these, spread by the female Anopheles mosquito, kills more than one million people a year in Africa alone and is responsible for 40 per cent of the continent’s pubic health expenditure. Now that is something to take seriously.
Of course what we most fear and hate depends upon where we’re standing. Rural Africans often have a very different perspective on their wildlife from that of visitors. The average cassava farmer in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, for instance, has no affection for elephants. Neither would you, if they trashed your entire harvest in a single night and threatened you as you cycled to work. And while massing flocks of red-billed quelea may entertain tourists with their spectacular aerial manoeuvres, farmers fear these small seed-eating birds, which can descend on crops in plague-like numbers and destroy livelihoods in the process. Along with locusts, they played a significant part in the famine that struck the Sahel region during 2004/2005.
Abating the hatred
So hatred and revulsion have many different causes – some rational, many not. But they are never very
helpful emotions. Dangerous animals deserve our respect, not our fear, while those that are simply unpopular generally warrant a little more understanding. Consider the case of the African wild dog. We once reviled this endangered predator even more than the hyena, and persecuted it as vermin all over Africa. Today, rehabilitated in our affections as fascinating and even ‘beautiful’, it is the ultimate safari sighting. Too bad there are no more than five thousand left.
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