Whoops are long-distance calls that display identity, designate location, or request support, and unlike wolves, which howl as a group, each hyena usually calls on its own. A study of 117 whoop bouts from 60 hyenas found that whoops get deeper with age and that non-juvenile males and females can be distinguished. The whoop can be heard by people from more than 5 km away, according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

If a whoop carries identity, perhaps a computer could recognize it. Scientists used machine learning on field recordings from Kenya's Maasai Mara, and the program matched a whoop bout to the right one of 13 hyenas about 54 percent of the time, about six times more often than chance.

The giggle is a different kind of call. Berkeley researchers recorded the giggles of a captive colony of 26 spotted hyenas. Dominant hyenas gave steadier, more confident-sounding giggles, and subordinate hyenas gave more variable ones. A hyena's laugh is not a sign that it is amused. It giggles when it is excited, frustrated or stressed, for example when many hyenas want the same food.

Rank matters in a clan, which female spotted hyenas lead. A hyena cub gets its rank in the clan from its mother. Dominance rank in hyena society is not correlated with size or fighting ability. Power belongs to the individuals with the best network of allies. Even so, spotted hyenas spend most of their time alone or in small groups, and meet up for things like guarding the territory and the den.

In puzzle-box tests in Kenya with 62 wild hyenas, the animals had to slide open a bolt latch to get meat, and only nine of 62 succeeded; hyenas that tried more different ways at the puzzle box were more successful, and fear of new things held them back. Juveniles tried more behaviours and were less fearful than adults, and rank and sex did not matter.

The spotted hyena is one branch of a once-large family. The family was much more diverse in the past: more than 60 probable species are known from living animals and the fossil record. The earliest hyena-family fossils, civet-like animals, date to the middle Miocene, about 17 to 18 million years ago. A giant hyena, Pachycrocuta brevirostris, weighed about 110 kg, about 20 percent larger than the spotted hyena. The genus Crocuta arose about 5 million years ago, and fossils of 4 species are found in Africa, but the spotted hyena is the only one that survives.

Today the spotted hyena's status is Least Concern (2014 assessment, as of November 2026). The largest known populations are in the Serengeti and Kruger National Park, and populations are declining in eastern, central and western Africa, as of November 2026. The main threat to spotted hyenas is persecution by humans, often driven by fear or by conflict over livestock.

Words to know

• whoops: long loud calls
• subordinate: lower in rank
• fossils: ancient remains
• dominance: higher rank
• persecution: unfair harm