Happy Zebra Clan, May 19th

Got to see Julia do a “boldness” box trial yesterday evening! Super neat watching the cubs notice and it cautiously one by one go and investigate. Julia hasn’t looked at the data yet, but she thinks that the less dominant cubs might be more investigative. Older cubs tend to be less afraid, but Mojito just sat and watched everyone else investigate it for about fifteen minutes then walked up, went inside, and ate almost all of the powdered milk before anyone else went in. Maybe older/dominant cubs are ok with letting subordinate animals do the ‘risky’ exploring and only when it seems safe calmly go ahead? Clay, the youngest daughter of Happy Zebra’s alpha Pike, was happy to not make a single appearance! They startled themselves at least ten times, I can’t remember who initiated the startling but exploring something new involves a lot of approach and backing off. They sure LOVE the powdered milk that Julia puts out. 

After the trial Arbalet came to the den to say hi, she is Clay’s older sister. Happy Zebra clan is my favorite so far for several reasons, the cubs are easy to tell apart and there aren’t as many as at North, the grass is short around the den making it easy to see CIs (critical incidents), and I love the family dynamic of the alpha family. Pike has several sister’s and daughters and some granddaughters (almost all girls!) and they form a very loving and friendly family. Even the younger daughters without cubs come and hang out at the den just to play with the cubs. There is very little aggression between family members. This means that Happy Zebra’s alpha family is very strong, the fact that Pike had many daughters means that she’ll have an easy time maintaining her leadership over the clan, and there is indication that female hyenas have some choice in what sex their children will be. A mid/low ranking female having a lot of daughters may be thinking about a take-over. 

In animals in which the fitness of males has a very broad range and the fitness of females is fairly constant low fitness animals who may only have a few children and only has a few resources to care for them will typically have girls (a safer bet) whereas very successful animals who have the resources to produce and care for many offspring may have more males (higher payoff). However in hyenas female cubs often means stronger clan relationships, girls will stay in the clan their entire lives and therefore provide support for family members (and in some clans may even nurse related hyenas offspring). I wonder what the range of fitness is for male hyenas? Males have their own dominance hierarchy that is completely separate from the females (immigrant males that is). The females don’t seem to care or pay much attention to the dominance ranking of the immigrant males and I’m not sure if the dominant male has a greater reproductive success. Dominance within males is strongly correlated with length of time in the clan. Males that are still with the natal clan that have not yet dispersed maintain the rank they were born with through their mother but no female will ever mate with them, forcing them to disperse and try to be accepted into another unrelated clan. 

Skipped dinner last night, guts feeling a little strange, perhaps not nauseous but still uncomfortable enough to compel me to take some tums and sleep in this morning! I climbed into bed at 8:30 and stayed in bed until around 6 (to pee) then went back to sleep until around 8, though I did wake up a few times all shivery/anxious/guts feeling weird. Wes and Julia went to Happy Zebra again and some hyenas were ‘testing’ a pack of wildebeest but there weren’t enough hyenas really joining in for anyone to start a real hunt, lucky for me. I would have been soo mad if I had missed a kill! I’m not sure if my sensitive gut last night/this morning is the expected ‘getting sick’ that everyone usually goes through within their first month here, but if it was then I got off pretty easy. Ate a piece of toast and part of a fried egg and then had some green tea with ginger and am feeling better now I think.

I did the transcribing last night which was a lot of fun, I’m getting familiar enough with the hyenas at Happy Zebra that I can really start catching all the CIs. Oh, and for those of you who don’t know how hyenas hunt, hyenas are typically distance runners rather than ambush hunters like lions and leopards or sprinters like cheetahs. A group of three of four hyena will run into a herd of animals to make them scatter than stand and watch and select one they want to take down (all four hyenas may select four different animals) so they are not as coordinate pack hunters as wolves/wild dogs. Then they’ll chase that animal until it tires and they can disembowel it. They are also very efficient scavengers and can crack open bones with their jaws to get at the marrow inside. (They have huge crests and huge zygomatic arches on their skulls- reminded me of a gorilla! Such powerful jaws! Very different from a dog skull.) So this morning Julia and Wes saw some testing but no actual chases. Apparently there were some other males sitting off to the side not really helping or getting involved and if they had perhaps the hyenas doing the testing would have pursued some of the animals.