Sightings of Spotted hyena in Lion Sands are quite rare due to their low numbers, therefore any sighting of these magnificent animals is a special one – but recently our guests were treated to the most incredible sighting!We had located a den site about a month ago after following an adult female hyena traveling down one of the roads at a rapid pace.  She followed the road to the Hilda’s Rock area and then moved into the vegetation.  There we found an incredible den site under a large rock, there were three cubs at the site, two cubs of approximately two months of age and one cub was younger than a month!  We have had several awesome sightings of these cubs playing around the den site but last week we noticed that there were now five cubs!  Two tiny cubs have now joined the clan and can be seen peering out of the dens site, still a little nervous to venture out …

These are highly social animals, living in clans whose size is related to the food supply available.  The stable core of the clan is females and as a result males disperse.  There are separate dominance hierarchies among males and females and females dominate all males.  High-ranking females have priority of access to food and to resting sites near the den entrance and as a result they rear more cubs than low-rankers.  All the females in the clan breed and their cubs den together but each female suckles only her own young.

Hopefully in future we will have several more exciting encounters with the growing cubs …

This Journal Entry was posted on Thursday, 13 August 2009 at 3:05 am.