The social lives of spotted hyenas are remarkably like those of cercopithecine primates, meaning baboons and macaques, in size, structure, and patterns of competition and cooperation. Hyenas recognize their kin and other clan members as individuals using several senses, recognize third-party kin and rank relationships among their clan mates, and use this knowledge in social decisions. Dominance rank in hyena society is not correlated with size or fighting ability. Power belongs to the individuals with the best network of allies.
Scientists tested whether hyenas can identify individuals by their whoops with playback experiments, modelled on earlier tests with vervet monkeys. Researchers have also 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. Whoops are long-distance calls that display identity, designate location, or request support.
Hyenas appear to rely more than primates on social facilitation and simple rules of thumb, and no evidence to date suggests that they are capable of true imitation. The gross anatomy of the spotted hyena's brain might resemble the primate brain in an expanded frontal cortex, presumed to be involved in social behaviour, but this is still being studied. In puzzle-box tests in Kenya, only nine of 62 wild hyenas opened a bolt latch to get meat, and fear of new things held them back.
Even a hyena's best-known sound has open questions. Hyena researchers say giggles may help the animals navigate their social relationships, but it is not yet known whether the rank pattern holds up in larger groups, or whether hyenas pay attention to it. It is hard to study giggles in the wild because other hyenas take up the giggles, which makes it hard to determine who giggled what.
The story reaches far back. The genus Crocuta arose about 5 million years ago, and changes in Crocuta fossils suggest a shift from solitary scavenging to group hunting, as in modern spotted hyenas. Spotted hyenas once ranged throughout Eurasia. The earliest European fossils are about 780,000 years old, near Atapuerca, Spain, and the hyena was superabundant in western European cave deposits of the late Pleistocene. The reasons spotted hyenas died out in Eurasia are not certain.
As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List status of the spotted hyena is Least Concern, from a 2014 assessment; Animal Diversity Web's older account called the species Lower Risk and conservation dependent. The Ngorongoro Crater hyena population has more than doubled in size since the survey began in April 1996, and scientists are asking why it recovered. The largest known populations are in the Serengeti and Kruger National Park, while populations are declining in eastern, central and western Africa.
The main threat to spotted hyenas is persecution by humans, often driven by fear or by conflict over livestock. In Mekelle, Ethiopia, hyenas were estimated to remove 207 metric tons of animal waste a year, which is 4.2 percent of the animal waste thrown away by residents and businesses. Researchers argue that if hyenas lose access to waste, they may turn to hunting livestock, and they recommend nonlethal management so that hyenas and people can coexist.
Words to know
- primates: monkeys and apes
- playback: replaying recorded sound
- facilitation: helping along
- superabundant: extremely plentiful
- coexist: live together
