IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Estes, R.D. | |
| Predators and scavengers | |
| 2003 Natural History (76 ): 20-29 | |
Each year, as the number of trained zoologists making field studies in Africa multiplies, more and more cherished popular concepts about African wildlife are called into question. Like many popular notions about animals, upon critical examination they prove to be misleading half-truths. Probably no group of animals has been more misrepresented than the predators and scavengers. Lions, for instance, are commonly credited with near-human intelligence in the way they collaborate in capturing prey. Many authors firmly assert that wild dogs operate as a relay team to run down antelopes, and are so fearsome that game will totally abandon an area in which a park is active. As for jackals and hyenas, they are often pictured as scavengers on putrid carrion and at lion kills, as camp robbers, and as destroyers of defenseless young and decrepit old. The spotted hyena in particular, has the reputation of a skulking coward that is capable of biting off natives faces and snatching unattended babies. But that can be rouled by the smallest creature brave enough to stand up to it. Some of these notions have a basis in fact, but at best they offer mere thumbnail sketches of the variable and complex behavior of these animals. |
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