Hyænidæ — The Hyænas
The second family of the Æluroidea contains only one genus, the Hyæna, which, though somewhat resembling the dog in outward appearance, connects the cat with the civet. The differences between the Felidæ and the Viverridæ, setting aside minor details, are in the teeth, and the possession by the latter of a caudal pouch. My readers are now familiar with the simple cutting form of the feline teeth, which are thirty in number. The civets have no less than forty, and the grinders, instead of having cutting scissor-like edges, are cuspidate, or crowned with tubercles. Now the hyæna comes in as an intermediate form. He has four more premolars than the typical cat, and the large grinding teeth are conical, blunt and very powerful, the base of the cone being belted by a strong ridge, and the general structure is one adapted for crushing rather than cutting. Professor Owen relates that an eminent engineer, to whom he showed a hyæna’s jaw, remarked that the strong conical tooth, with its basal ridge, was a perfect model of a hammer for breaking stones.
Of course, such a formation would be useless without a commensurate motive power, and we may, therefore, look to the skull for certain signs of the enormous development of muscles, which this animal possesses. In shape it somewhat resembles the cat’s skull, though not so short, nor yet so long as that of the civet or dog. The zygomatic arches are greatly developed, also the bony ridges for the attachment of the muscles, especially the sagittal or great longitudinal crest on the top of the head, which is in comparison far larger than that of even the tiger, and to which are attached the enormous muscles of the cheek working the powerful jaws, which are capable of crushing the thigh-bone of a bullock. Captain Baldwin, in his book, says he remembers once, when watching over a kill, seeing a hyæna, only some twelve feet below where he sat, snap with a single effort through the rib of a buffalo.
The hyæna also possesses the sub-caudal pouch of the civets, which gave rise amongst the ancients to various conjectures as to the dual character of its sex.
The bulla tympani or bulb of the ear is large as in the cats, but it is not divided into two compartments by a bony partition (which in the dogs is reduced to a low wall), but the paroccipital process or bony clamp on the external posterior surface is closely applied to the bulb as in the cats, and not separated by a groove as in the dogs.
The cervical vertebræ sometimes become anchylosed, from whence, in former times, arose the superstition that this animal had but one bone in the neck.
In its internal anatomy, digestive as well as generative, the hyæna is nearer to the cat than the dog, but it possesses the cæcum, or blind gut, which is so large in the canidæ, small in the felines, and totally absent in the bears.
The tongue is rough, with a circular collection of retroflected spines. The hind legs are much shorter than the front, and the feet have only four toes with blunt worn claws, not retractile, but like those of the dog.
The hair is coarse and bristly, and usually prolonged into a sort of crest or mane along the neck and shoulders, and to a slighter degree down the back; the tail is bushy.
Dental formula: Inc., 3—3/3—3; can., 1—1/1—1; premolars, 4—4/3—3; molars, 1—1/1—1.
There are only three known species of hyæna, of which one, our common Indian animal, belongs to Asia, and two, H. crocuta and H. brunnea, to Africa.
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