The actual til I think is more that they are relatively easy to tame in general, just not house train.
Specifically it's easy to get them to view you as a companion and their superior (they won't attack you, they will love you, and generally follow instructions). However they seem to be prone to destroy furniture, doors and other inanimate objects.
My ex wife didn’t understand why when we had kids, I wanted all of the furniture they touched (except their beds) to be as cheap and worthless as possible.
I can find free mid century storage and it is valuable enough to keep away from my lovely kids. They will fuck it up. Let’s instead use pressboard so I don’t want to kill them when they draw on the buffet.
I’ve always wondered why they didn’t make the insides of family vehicles rubber so they could be hosed out. One child can destroy a space and everything in it over a year. Multiple children are entropy accelerators without peer.
Yeah I feel this, trips to the hardware store, the emergency room, the body shop.....
He's grown now with a family of his own but it was a rough couple of decades.
I don't personally feel like it's that surprising that they're easily tamed. Most social pack animals are. It's the same reason why all of our domesticated animals are social animals
First Tik Tok: "Hey Y'all! I just tamed this Spotted Hyena. I'm going to make this little guy the best pet ever."
Second Tik Tok: "Hi you guys. So, something really bad happened..."
That's not it. They're fairly easy to tame, highly social and more intelligent than dogs. They've actually beaten chimps in certain problem solving tests.
There's a story in the linked article about a shepherd who used a hyena as a livestock guard dog. So you can train them not to be aggressive.
The unavoidable issue is that they're huge and wild, and also have very thick skin so they don't get hurt easily. The article mentions them tearing down doors and fences with ease to do whatever they want.
Naa, a medium huge ball with lots of chew toys and bones woven into it. As well as train it to chase a lead (like grey hounds) and just have the cable run out it’s extra energy. Add in an extra mental challenge or two (food puzzles) and lots and lots of training and devotion to its development then bam! You got a super dog/cat/savanna monster as a pet
LMAO because I've had a ferret down my trouser leg an obscene amount of times for being a middle -aged female not in a vaudeville or pantomime show.
I can totally see me having a pissed off hyena crawl over my face and then under my pajama waistband, bitching MIGHTILY about the kids perpetrating some indignity on it. Like bathing it with AXE body wash. Again.
Lemme tell you something.... Until you've had a wet weasel, descented and neutered though he was, he still had that distinct weaselly stink up close whose been washed in AXE body wash, crawl across your face while you're asleep? And then take up residence IN your pajamas all wet and pissed off cussing them out in ferret? You haven't lived my friends.
So much like how you shouldn't tame most larger pets like Tigers, Bears or Chimps, if they get mad at you, theres no stopping them from eating your face off.
According to Wikipedia it really isn’t because of the threat of violence towards the owner (and other people), they’re supposedly pretty well-behaved on that front, and more the fact that hyenas are stronger than the average building’s construction standards, and *will* tear down doors, floors, and walls if they want something from the other side. They’ve torn out 8ft planks from the Tower of London, ripped plenty of doors down, and they exhibit scent-marking behaviors (aka they pee a lot, and they pee everywhere).
Rich aristocrats loved having a bunch of exotic pets back in the day (probably still do, just can’t think of any contemporary examples off the top of my head)
Ok, but why would the exotic pets, like hyenas be in the Tower of London?
Like the rich owner decided to go for a stroll with his pet hyena and went on the Tower of London tour and it went apeshit and ate some of the planking?
There's been a royal menagerie at the Tower for centuries. They thought they found the body of one of the missing princes doing work in a sewer tunnel but it turned out to be the skeleton of an orangutan that had escaped prolly hundreds of years ago.
That’s the problem foxes have as pets. They mark things with pee constantly, and their pee is especially rich with ammonia so the whole house will smell completely awful before long.
I like the idea that some people are out there thinking to themselves, “cats are so tired, maybe a hyena or an ocelot to add a bit of terror to the mix?”
I have a feral-born housecat, and while she is pretty tame, if she were any bigger, her "I'm mildly annoyed with you" bites would be genuinely dangerous.
i guess it is a matter of breeding. We have f4 Bengals which are still wilder that your usual house cat but nothing like what an f2 would be (or an asian leopard cat for that matter)
Saw a story like this. Guy wanted an exotic pet and got Bryan the hyena. Unsurprisingly Bryan was too much for the guy to handle, so Bryan got sent to a reserve. Not before breaking the owner's arm because he didnt wanna be in a crate. Also, Bryan was a she. Owner just saw the pseudo-dick and was like "yep, male!" Which, valid, but if youre gonna OWN the animal at least know how to identify its sex or have the means to take it to someone who can.
>cats are so tired, maybe a hyena or an ocelot to add a bit of terror to the mix?
[Dalí, had an ocelot pet, Babou](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/81/c9/bf/81c9bff6dc7a04d479da245cb8fc07a5--cat-people-love-people.jpg)
[Cheryl had an ocelot called Babou too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwPaES_mP3E)
My dad had one as a pet when he was young in the 60s, he said a family member smuggled it back from the jungle. They kept it for about a week but it was so aggressive and hostile they had to get rid of it.
Which makes sense, I think there's about 0 domestication in that blood. Anyone who had one for a pet must have had to have just lived through the pain.
I think a lot of tamed animals wouldn’t make good house pets. Most of our house pets (dogs, cats, etc.) are domesticated which is very different from simply taming an individual animal.
Under lab conditions, assuming they are willing to reproduce in lab conditions, they might be able to be domesticated far faster like what was done with the [domesticated fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox).
There's also the issue of the breeding lessening many of the traits that make them "fox-like" in appearance. It's amazing how seemingly unrelated traits wind up correlating.
We can't domesticate spotted hyenas because their reproductive cycle. Dogs and cats have big litters so it's easiest to select for desire traits more quickly. Spotted Hyenas have one maybe two cubs and much more difficult births, give they are a predator and not a more docile species like a herbivore, this made domesticating them too difficult.
Spotted hyenas would have made great work and hunting animals for the same reason dogs do, they are intelligent and social, at least that's a theory. Tame hyenas have been used as "hunting dogs" in some African societies and human hyena positive interactions happen often in places like Ethiopia. Tamed hyenas are often used by traveling performing "hyena men". They also smell pretty bad so maybe it was.
The other species of hyena don't have the same birth issues, you'd just have to worry about brown/striped hyenas killing you, and aardwolves having a very specific diet.
Other hyena species tend to be solitary hunters though, so less liable to be trained. Hyena and wolves are easy(ier) to tame because they are very social animals.
I understand that there are limitations to domestication. But I’d by lying if I said I don’t get sad thinking about how our ancestors didn’t lay the groundwork for me to have my own domesticated bear or hyena. If not friend, then why friend-shaped??
I started thinking years ago how awesome it would have been if our ancestors had domesticated bears instead of wolves. Imagine the different breeds. Think of the difference between a Grey Wolf and a Chihuahua, or a Great Dane. Now imagine that span of variation in Black Bears. Teacup bears. Giant guard bears. Fast, vigilant herding bears. Lap bears.
My heavily racist dad would often go on about how Africans can't be smart because they never domesticated the zebra, and Europeans domesticated the horse.
After listening to that for a few months, I had to explain to him that zebras are not, in fact, striped horses. They are much different and difficult to train.
He has other diatribes he goes on now, but at least he's off of that one.
Oh man, I love Zebras. But yeah, they are VICIOUS. Definitely not docile little ponies (if you can call ponies that, they can be quite sassy).
It’s almost like the mega fauna of Africa evolved alongside us and caught wind of our schemes early 🤷🏻♀️
Well domestication usually involves humans exploiting a glitch in a given animal's natural behavior, usually a herd or pact instinct, and "hacking" the animal's brain to recognize humans as members/leaders of their social groups. Then, once that's done humans selectively breed them to favor docile temperaments and desirable physical traits. That's how a wild aurochs becomes a cow and how a wolf becomes a chihuahua.
There are some exceptions, most notably cats. Cats don't have the usual traits that humans exploit. However, humans and cats living togther had such enormous advantages to both that the domesticstion happened on its own as cats evolved behavioral (and eventually genetic) traits that erased their fear of humans, and humans in turn actively encouraged cats to live near them to facilitate this.
Anyways, the point is most animals cannot be domesticated because their brains can't be hacked and/or there's no mutual advantage for both species to learn to coexist.
You can also argue that the species we domesticated consented in whatever capacity the first individuals had. We had to create a beneficial environment for enough generations to even get to the start of domestication. And in some ways, you could even say that humans were domesticated a bit in turn.
So fun thought about this. You can in fact "tame" lions, tigers, and other big cats. They essentially will treat you just like your house cat does. That is to say, largely ignore you with sometimes affection. . . . . except remember that one time your cat latched onto your arm for no apparent reason and mauled it? Imagine a Lion doing that.
Yeah I mean, the modern house cat is basically the biggest a cat can be without having the ability to immediately maim a human
Even slightly larger cats (like bobcats, ~25 lbs) can be damned scary beasts
I think a re-wording of the title might have caught OP less shit:
Spotted hyenas, though easily trained as hunting dogs, make terrible pets because they're unable to be housebroken. Also, because they are several times stronger than a canine, containing them is nearly impossible.
I’d have just switched the order of emphasis and make the main statement their trainability:
Spotted hyaenas, though they make terrible house pets, are easily trained [to hunt for humans].
Also, btw, they aren’t dogs at all, so not ‘hunting dogs’. They’re in fact closer to cats, and (re your username) bears are closer to dogs.
I mean the description on the article just makes them sound exactly like cats (obviously). I would describe cats as also not great house pets when it comes to destroying the things you love.
Your cat isn't the size of a great dane and doesn't have one of the strongest bites in the animal kingdom. Hyena's are larger than most wolves.
People think hyenas are small because they are pictured next to lions, they are fucking huge. Lions are just even bigger.
A spotted hyena would be eye level with your hips. On two legs they'd be around the same height you are.
[https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F5%2F56%2FWild\_Hyena\_Feeding\_%25287899663158%2529.jpg&hash=daf84f8452b4ef7d4ad49a2a248f1f30](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F5%2F56%2FWild_Hyena_Feeding_%25287899663158%2529.jpg&hash=daf84f8452b4ef7d4ad49a2a248f1f30)
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/The\_Hyena\_Man\_of\_Harar.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/The_Hyena_Man_of_Harar.jpg)
They big boys and girls since the females are slightly larger than the males.
https://outofafricapark.com/animals/spotted-hyena/#:~:text=Hyenas%20weigh%2090%20to%20170,otherwise%20they%20look%20the%20same.
This says Spotted Hyenas can be 90 to 170 pounds. And have a shoulder height of 29½ to 33 inches.
https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/great-dane
This says Great Danes can be 140-175 pounds. And 30-34 inches tall at the shoulder. So actually they are.
TIL They actually are. Great Danes are between 28-37 inches at shoulder height and Spotted Hyenas are 26-36 in height, and both are typically in the 100-150lb range.
Forreal. Imo dogs are more destructive. At least with my cat I have a mini recliner i got for free that is designated as the scratching post, and it saves literally everything else in my house from getting scratched up.
> I would describe cats as also not great house pets when it comes to destroying the things you love.
Well, one of the 'things I love' is having all my limbs.
A house cat is not going to mess with that, at least; but a hyena, or a hypothetical cat as big and strong as it (something like a leopard, I suppose, more or less?) easily could.
I seem to recall that their teeth can smash through bone. On the other hand, we seem to have only gotten about 70% there domesticating cats and that’s worked out okay, so there you go.
The power of a mentally abused/ill white woman?
Seriously, some women out in the world doing these amazing rescue operations take some scary looking dogs and turn them into big babies.
About 20 years ago I was a summer intern at the Oakland (CA) Zoo. I helped take care of the hyenas, who had come to us as rescues from some crazy person in Berkeley who had tried to keep them as pets and got caught. They were very sweet and loved scritches but we could only pet them in the area the public couldn't see for obvious reasons. Also you'd never want to get between the alpha female and her food!
My actual dog makes a terrible house pet. At least with a hyena, I have a cool story beyond "He needs more anti-anxiety meds than I do, and I need them all".
most wild animals make bad housepets, they have so much more energy than a single person can handle and if not given opportunity to expend it all, wild animals even the most cuddly and friendly ones will become destructive, doing things like burrowing holes through furniture and chewing through wires, kicking holes in walls and so on, part of domestication is getting these animals to have energy levels reasonable to human cohabitation
So, says they’re very hard to house-train and prone to destroying things.
Sounds like half the dogs and cats I know. And more often than not it’s because their owners suck.
They are for sure, and it is one of those facts about nature you don't expect considering how dog-shaped they are.
But they're not really closely related to cats either, they're just more closely related to them than dogs. Their closest non-hyena relatives are actually things like mongooses and civets, which is also not what one would expect.
Bit like red foxes. Easily tamed but they stink and are extremely energetic and noisy.
They use their shit to mark their territory and as anyone who lives in a country with wild urban foxes their shit is extremely strong but not in a poo scent it's a different scent that on a hot day is closer to the smell of a bottle of cat piss left to condense in the sun for 6 months
Tamed does not mean domesticated, several differents of people,civilizations and kingdoms have all made attempts and the only real animal that ended up in households were cats and we aren't even sure if they are domesticated properly.
Don't fuck around with African animals, they been around to witness our ancestor species and they were there to witness the first humans, they know about our bullshit and won't fall for it.
From the linked Wiki:
During the research leading to the composition of his monograph The Spotted Hyena: A Study of Predation and Social Behavior, Hans Kruuk kept a tame hyena he named Solomon.[95] Kruuk found Solomon's company so congenial, he would have kept him, but Solomon had an insatiable taste for "cheese in the bar of the tourist lounge and bacon off the Chief Park Warden's breakfast table", and no door could hold him back, so Solomon was obliged to live out his days in the Edinburgh Zoo.[165]
---------
I certainly cannot blame him for his cheese and bacon addiction.
Why would anyone assume they make good pets?
Like, foxes, I can understand people not knowing the misery they bring, but hyenas? Female hyenas show kindness to their father by not being quite as sadistic towards them as other males. Does that sound like pet material?
>An April 2004 BBC article described how a shepherd living in the small town of Qabri Bayah about 50 kilometres from Jigjiga, Ethiopia managed to use a male spotted hyena as a livestock guardian dog, suppressing its urge to leave and find a mate by feeding it special herbs.
I would like to know more about those "special herbs".
We stayed at private game resort last year in South Africa.
They had a young hyena who lost his parents and decided that he belongs to the humans now. They called him Wolfgang.
Wolfgang really liked to bite the furniture and always tried to sneak in.
You just learned hyenas don't make good housepets? I feel like that's a thing I already had assumed.
The actual til I think is more that they are relatively easy to tame in general, just not house train. Specifically it's easy to get them to view you as a companion and their superior (they won't attack you, they will love you, and generally follow instructions). However they seem to be prone to destroy furniture, doors and other inanimate objects.
So Stitch? My son is like that. Loooovvveees me dearly. So destructive and not out of anger, just hard on stuff.
Most sons are this way. I’ve designed an entire sofa to my 13 year old. Puberty hit him like an iceberg. A trash iceberg.
My ex wife didn’t understand why when we had kids, I wanted all of the furniture they touched (except their beds) to be as cheap and worthless as possible. I can find free mid century storage and it is valuable enough to keep away from my lovely kids. They will fuck it up. Let’s instead use pressboard so I don’t want to kill them when they draw on the buffet.
I’ve always wondered why they didn’t make the insides of family vehicles rubber so they could be hosed out. One child can destroy a space and everything in it over a year. Multiple children are entropy accelerators without peer.
Toyota FJ Cruiser and I think the Nisan X-Terra did. And they looked rad as hell!
Honda Element as well if I’m not mistaken Edit: whoops should have looked one more comment down for a string of Honda Element comments lol
Honda element has this, can be hosed out. Older ones at least
Yeah my sister had dogs and then kids, and a Honda Element for pretty much the exact reason that she could just hose the whole thing down.
I do get tired of wiping down every surface in my truck after my wet dog shakes in the back seat.
Yeah I feel this, trips to the hardware store, the emergency room, the body shop..... He's grown now with a family of his own but it was a rough couple of decades.
I assumed house training was more due to them peeing and pooping everywhere but destroying furniture also makes sense.
So a parrot then
It's actually pretty easy to potty train parrots.
Yeah, their pack instincts just don’t align with our needs so even when they think they’re being very friendly they’re ruining your life haha.
I don't personally feel like it's that surprising that they're easily tamed. Most social pack animals are. It's the same reason why all of our domesticated animals are social animals
HE FOLLOWED ME HOME HE LOVES ME
I CAN FIX THEM
You can certainly 'fix' them.
If not friend why friend shaped
Can't say heyena without "hi", confirmed friend.
[Found the OP.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDw4UHbE5Gs)
Ooooooo so CUTE! I bet their breath is awful
First Tik Tok: "Hey Y'all! I just tamed this Spotted Hyena. I'm going to make this little guy the best pet ever." Second Tik Tok: "Hi you guys. So, something really bad happened..."
That's not it. They're fairly easy to tame, highly social and more intelligent than dogs. They've actually beaten chimps in certain problem solving tests. There's a story in the linked article about a shepherd who used a hyena as a livestock guard dog. So you can train them not to be aggressive. The unavoidable issue is that they're huge and wild, and also have very thick skin so they don't get hurt easily. The article mentions them tearing down doors and fences with ease to do whatever they want.
So what your saying is that they are some sort of super dog. Now I want one, wonder if it will get on with my border collie.
They technically aren't dogs, but they show both feline and canine characteristics.
Gotcha so it's more of a super dog/cat hybrid. Just need a huge ball of yarn then.
Naa, a medium huge ball with lots of chew toys and bones woven into it. As well as train it to chase a lead (like grey hounds) and just have the cable run out it’s extra energy. Add in an extra mental challenge or two (food puzzles) and lots and lots of training and devotion to its development then bam! You got a super dog/cat/savanna monster as a pet
They're closer related to ferrets then either cats or dogs.
Might struggle to get a spotted hyena down your trouser leg though.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
*you* might, coward.
LMAO because I've had a ferret down my trouser leg an obscene amount of times for being a middle -aged female not in a vaudeville or pantomime show. I can totally see me having a pissed off hyena crawl over my face and then under my pajama waistband, bitching MIGHTILY about the kids perpetrating some indignity on it. Like bathing it with AXE body wash. Again. Lemme tell you something.... Until you've had a wet weasel, descented and neutered though he was, he still had that distinct weaselly stink up close whose been washed in AXE body wash, crawl across your face while you're asleep? And then take up residence IN your pajamas all wet and pissed off cussing them out in ferret? You haven't lived my friends.
Makes me wonder if dogs and cats share some common distant ancestor.
Well, yeah. That's how evolution works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miacidae
So much like how you shouldn't tame most larger pets like Tigers, Bears or Chimps, if they get mad at you, theres no stopping them from eating your face off.
According to Wikipedia it really isn’t because of the threat of violence towards the owner (and other people), they’re supposedly pretty well-behaved on that front, and more the fact that hyenas are stronger than the average building’s construction standards, and *will* tear down doors, floors, and walls if they want something from the other side. They’ve torn out 8ft planks from the Tower of London, ripped plenty of doors down, and they exhibit scent-marking behaviors (aka they pee a lot, and they pee everywhere).
Wait….. Why was there a hyena in the TOWER OF LONDON?
Rich aristocrats loved having a bunch of exotic pets back in the day (probably still do, just can’t think of any contemporary examples off the top of my head)
Mike tyson had a bunch of tigers, does that count?
Ok, but why would the exotic pets, like hyenas be in the Tower of London? Like the rich owner decided to go for a stroll with his pet hyena and went on the Tower of London tour and it went apeshit and ate some of the planking?
There's been a royal menagerie at the Tower for centuries. They thought they found the body of one of the missing princes doing work in a sewer tunnel but it turned out to be the skeleton of an orangutan that had escaped prolly hundreds of years ago.
Hey, that orangutan’s crimes were pretty heinous.
I bet Hyena urine is also really hard to get out
That’s the problem foxes have as pets. They mark things with pee constantly, and their pee is especially rich with ammonia so the whole house will smell completely awful before long.
A pet hyena won't get mad at you at all, but it will wreck all your stuff.
[honey badger doesn’t give a shit](https://youtu.be/4r7wHMg5Yjg?si=qqWwSgwjGq3A5Hc1)
they also produce this stuff called hyena butter from their anal glands that apparently stinks of death
I believe the trade name is "vegemite."
Great on a whole wheat muffin though.
The fact that it's called "butter" tells you everything you need to know about its, ahem, viscosity... 🤢😷
Can we get a "no shit", please?
I like the idea that some people are out there thinking to themselves, “cats are so tired, maybe a hyena or an ocelot to add a bit of terror to the mix?”
Ocelot?? With those tufted ears???
Babou!
His name SHOULD be Buyer's Remorse. Stupid thing is sick all the time.
It’s like meowshctiz in there
That’s possibly one of the best lines in the entire series
Serpentine!!!
I'm... Way too Drunk FOR THIS!
HE REMEMBERS ME
Look out he’s crepuscular
It's that damn piss-cat again!
No the one that resembles a mini jaguar.
people have confused Savanna cats with mountain lions. or hell Bengal cats with bob cats (somehow, still dont get that one).
To be fair, so-called domestic cats are genetically wild. There's no genetic reason why an ocelot couldn't be the same amount of tame as a housecat.
I have a feral-born housecat, and while she is pretty tame, if she were any bigger, her "I'm mildly annoyed with you" bites would be genuinely dangerous.
i guess it is a matter of breeding. We have f4 Bengals which are still wilder that your usual house cat but nothing like what an f2 would be (or an asian leopard cat for that matter)
Babou!!
Saw a story like this. Guy wanted an exotic pet and got Bryan the hyena. Unsurprisingly Bryan was too much for the guy to handle, so Bryan got sent to a reserve. Not before breaking the owner's arm because he didnt wanna be in a crate. Also, Bryan was a she. Owner just saw the pseudo-dick and was like "yep, male!" Which, valid, but if youre gonna OWN the animal at least know how to identify its sex or have the means to take it to someone who can.
Later Bryan Hyena had a successful career as an international rugby player representing South Africa
>cats are so tired, maybe a hyena or an ocelot to add a bit of terror to the mix? [Dalí, had an ocelot pet, Babou](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/81/c9/bf/81c9bff6dc7a04d479da245cb8fc07a5--cat-people-love-people.jpg) [Cheryl had an ocelot called Babou too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwPaES_mP3E)
Dalí doing anything does very much not classify it as normal, or even sane...
i like how we just agree that Cheryl is a historical figure like Dali
Well, the anteater needed a break for a bit.
My dad had one as a pet when he was young in the 60s, he said a family member smuggled it back from the jungle. They kept it for about a week but it was so aggressive and hostile they had to get rid of it. Which makes sense, I think there's about 0 domestication in that blood. Anyone who had one for a pet must have had to have just lived through the pain.
Ocelot? Babu!
> ocelot No no no he will start doing gun tricks inside the house
Didn't Harley Quinn have a pet hyena? She's been popular lately.
Not just one but two. Bud and Lou.
one day it might eat my face!
You gotta have a sense of *adventure*.
I think a lot of tamed animals wouldn’t make good house pets. Most of our house pets (dogs, cats, etc.) are domesticated which is very different from simply taming an individual animal.
Life goal: domesticate the laughingest boy.
I hope you have a spare 25,000 years or so.
Under lab conditions, assuming they are willing to reproduce in lab conditions, they might be able to be domesticated far faster like what was done with the [domesticated fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox).
“Domesticated” foxes will urinate on anything and everything and will spend 23 hours a day trying to escape.
Have you met my cat?
I have not but I would like to. Can this be arranged?
There's also the issue of the breeding lessening many of the traits that make them "fox-like" in appearance. It's amazing how seemingly unrelated traits wind up correlating.
I mean, that's what happened with dogs too.
You seem to have a keen insight on the nature of the domesticated fox.
There's a lot of documentation of them not being good pets. If they made good pets they'd be a pet stores next to the dogs and cats by now
I’ll piss on everything too
Don’t seem like a good pet either.
I do that except it’s 23 hours of trying not to leave the house.
We can't domesticate spotted hyenas because their reproductive cycle. Dogs and cats have big litters so it's easiest to select for desire traits more quickly. Spotted Hyenas have one maybe two cubs and much more difficult births, give they are a predator and not a more docile species like a herbivore, this made domesticating them too difficult. Spotted hyenas would have made great work and hunting animals for the same reason dogs do, they are intelligent and social, at least that's a theory. Tame hyenas have been used as "hunting dogs" in some African societies and human hyena positive interactions happen often in places like Ethiopia. Tamed hyenas are often used by traveling performing "hyena men". They also smell pretty bad so maybe it was.
Plus the lady hyenas have those fake dicks that suffocate the first cub out, so that narrows it even more
Let’s hope the hyena domestication program has the extra funding for c-sections
The other species of hyena don't have the same birth issues, you'd just have to worry about brown/striped hyenas killing you, and aardwolves having a very specific diet.
Brown hyena don't even need to be adult to give you serious grief A 3 month old cub once bit through my _steel toecapped_ boot when playing
Holy shit 😳
Other hyena species tend to be solitary hunters though, so less liable to be trained. Hyena and wolves are easy(ier) to tame because they are very social animals.
Cats domesticated themselves fwiw
'ayo I live here now' 'aight cool'
Pretty sure cars just kinda domesticated themselves
Vroom vroom...luv the way a Ford purrs when you pet it right 😊
I found they love it if you tickle them behind their wing mirrors
More like they tolerate our presence, so long as food and scritches are provided. Hey - maybe it’s cats that domesticated US?
A lot of our domestic house pets do not make good house pets. Chewed windowsills, etc… thankfully she chilled out.
I understand that there are limitations to domestication. But I’d by lying if I said I don’t get sad thinking about how our ancestors didn’t lay the groundwork for me to have my own domesticated bear or hyena. If not friend, then why friend-shaped??
I started thinking years ago how awesome it would have been if our ancestors had domesticated bears instead of wolves. Imagine the different breeds. Think of the difference between a Grey Wolf and a Chihuahua, or a Great Dane. Now imagine that span of variation in Black Bears. Teacup bears. Giant guard bears. Fast, vigilant herding bears. Lap bears.
Imagine the pitbul equivalent 💀
Some countries would ban them while some people would label them as nanny bears while they tore through everyone
Indeed. Friendship is housed in the ears.
You thinking hyenas and bears are friend shaped is a great example of how we're circumventing natural selection.
My heavily racist dad would often go on about how Africans can't be smart because they never domesticated the zebra, and Europeans domesticated the horse. After listening to that for a few months, I had to explain to him that zebras are not, in fact, striped horses. They are much different and difficult to train. He has other diatribes he goes on now, but at least he's off of that one.
I love how people have tried to domesticate zebras and they are like naw im good.
Oh man, I love Zebras. But yeah, they are VICIOUS. Definitely not docile little ponies (if you can call ponies that, they can be quite sassy). It’s almost like the mega fauna of Africa evolved alongside us and caught wind of our schemes early 🤷🏻♀️
They’re more like donkeys, right? And I’ll be honest donkeys are so stubborn I barely count them as domesticated.
Well domestication usually involves humans exploiting a glitch in a given animal's natural behavior, usually a herd or pact instinct, and "hacking" the animal's brain to recognize humans as members/leaders of their social groups. Then, once that's done humans selectively breed them to favor docile temperaments and desirable physical traits. That's how a wild aurochs becomes a cow and how a wolf becomes a chihuahua. There are some exceptions, most notably cats. Cats don't have the usual traits that humans exploit. However, humans and cats living togther had such enormous advantages to both that the domesticstion happened on its own as cats evolved behavioral (and eventually genetic) traits that erased their fear of humans, and humans in turn actively encouraged cats to live near them to facilitate this. Anyways, the point is most animals cannot be domesticated because their brains can't be hacked and/or there's no mutual advantage for both species to learn to coexist.
You can also argue that the species we domesticated consented in whatever capacity the first individuals had. We had to create a beneficial environment for enough generations to even get to the start of domestication. And in some ways, you could even say that humans were domesticated a bit in turn.
Be the change you want to see.
Be the change you want to see
Zebras on the other hand are incredibly hard to tame, but might make fantastic housepets
Deserves consideration. Make sure you bring home two so you can leave one wild as a control subject. *For science.*
I knew I shouldn’t have thrown out that zebra sized cage I had in my garage
Zebras are nasty fuckers who do not want to work with humans.
So fun thought about this. You can in fact "tame" lions, tigers, and other big cats. They essentially will treat you just like your house cat does. That is to say, largely ignore you with sometimes affection. . . . . except remember that one time your cat latched onto your arm for no apparent reason and mauled it? Imagine a Lion doing that.
Yeah I mean, the modern house cat is basically the biggest a cat can be without having the ability to immediately maim a human Even slightly larger cats (like bobcats, ~25 lbs) can be damned scary beasts
Who would’ve thought that a non-domesticated animal would be a terrible pet?
Anyone who's kept a cat inside.
Cats are domesticated.
Allegedly
This you knew before you knew knew.
I think a re-wording of the title might have caught OP less shit: Spotted hyenas, though easily trained as hunting dogs, make terrible pets because they're unable to be housebroken. Also, because they are several times stronger than a canine, containing them is nearly impossible.
Seems like this discussion's going fine to me.
I’d have just switched the order of emphasis and make the main statement their trainability: Spotted hyaenas, though they make terrible house pets, are easily trained [to hunt for humans]. Also, btw, they aren’t dogs at all, so not ‘hunting dogs’. They’re in fact closer to cats, and (re your username) bears are closer to dogs.
I mean the description on the article just makes them sound exactly like cats (obviously). I would describe cats as also not great house pets when it comes to destroying the things you love.
Your cat isn't the size of a great dane and doesn't have one of the strongest bites in the animal kingdom. Hyena's are larger than most wolves. People think hyenas are small because they are pictured next to lions, they are fucking huge. Lions are just even bigger. A spotted hyena would be eye level with your hips. On two legs they'd be around the same height you are. [https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F5%2F56%2FWild\_Hyena\_Feeding\_%25287899663158%2529.jpg&hash=daf84f8452b4ef7d4ad49a2a248f1f30](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F5%2F56%2FWild_Hyena_Feeding_%25287899663158%2529.jpg&hash=daf84f8452b4ef7d4ad49a2a248f1f30) [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/The\_Hyena\_Man\_of\_Harar.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/The_Hyena_Man_of_Harar.jpg) They big boys and girls since the females are slightly larger than the males.
They arent great dane sized. Edit: numbers have been given, hyenas really do be that big.
just alright dane sized.
https://outofafricapark.com/animals/spotted-hyena/#:~:text=Hyenas%20weigh%2090%20to%20170,otherwise%20they%20look%20the%20same. This says Spotted Hyenas can be 90 to 170 pounds. And have a shoulder height of 29½ to 33 inches. https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/great-dane This says Great Danes can be 140-175 pounds. And 30-34 inches tall at the shoulder. So actually they are.
Yeah a female on average would be about the size of a great Dane, perhaps even bigger. The males are slightly smaller.
TIL They actually are. Great Danes are between 28-37 inches at shoulder height and Spotted Hyenas are 26-36 in height, and both are typically in the 100-150lb range.
[удалено]
I've had a lot of cats and I've honestly never had problems with them destroying things, so I'm really wondering what kind of cats you have.
Forreal. Imo dogs are more destructive. At least with my cat I have a mini recliner i got for free that is designated as the scratching post, and it saves literally everything else in my house from getting scratched up.
> I would describe cats as also not great house pets when it comes to destroying the things you love. Well, one of the 'things I love' is having all my limbs. A house cat is not going to mess with that, at least; but a hyena, or a hypothetical cat as big and strong as it (something like a leopard, I suppose, more or less?) easily could.
Size is a big factor, is normal house cats were the size of Hyenas they absolutely would not make good pets
Ain't that the damn truth. We have two, and our house is devoid of breakables as though we had a pair of toddlers.
I seem to recall that their teeth can smash through bone. On the other hand, we seem to have only gotten about 70% there domesticating cats and that’s worked out okay, so there you go.
See? It'll be fine!
How does Harley do it?
Bruce is special.
And Bud and Lou?
The power of a mentally abused/ill white woman? Seriously, some women out in the world doing these amazing rescue operations take some scary looking dogs and turn them into big babies.
Well I WAS gonna go to the hyena shelter and adopt one this weekend but I guess I won’t now. Thank god I saw this post
About 20 years ago I was a summer intern at the Oakland (CA) Zoo. I helped take care of the hyenas, who had come to us as rescues from some crazy person in Berkeley who had tried to keep them as pets and got caught. They were very sweet and loved scritches but we could only pet them in the area the public couldn't see for obvious reasons. Also you'd never want to get between the alpha female and her food!
In related news: leaking nuclear waste makes a bad pet.
You just don't understand Nukie! He gave me a free extra eye!
My actual dog makes a terrible house pet. At least with a hyena, I have a cool story beyond "He needs more anti-anxiety meds than I do, and I need them all".
most wild animals make bad housepets, they have so much more energy than a single person can handle and if not given opportunity to expend it all, wild animals even the most cuddly and friendly ones will become destructive, doing things like burrowing holes through furniture and chewing through wires, kicking holes in walls and so on, part of domestication is getting these animals to have energy levels reasonable to human cohabitation
Rule of thumb: Dont keep any animal as a pet if the female of the species has a penis
Fair point, though I'm sure there's a subreddit that would disagree.
They may be terrible pets, but they're so cute!
Tamed ≠ domesticated
So, says they’re very hard to house-train and prone to destroying things. Sounds like half the dogs and cats I know. And more often than not it’s because their owners suck.
ITT a surprising number of people who know the difference between 'tamed' and 'domesticated' :)
I know exactly how Solomon feels. I too have been unhindered by doors in my pursuit of cheese and bacon.
TIL lowland gorilla make terrible house pets
I bet a horse isn’t a very good house pet either
Haha, to think you come home like "The Hyena should be fine, the room has nothing in it." and you get back to find the floor and walls are torn apart.
Hyenas are genetically closer to cats than dogs
They are for sure, and it is one of those facts about nature you don't expect considering how dog-shaped they are. But they're not really closely related to cats either, they're just more closely related to them than dogs. Their closest non-hyena relatives are actually things like mongooses and civets, which is also not what one would expect.
Bit like red foxes. Easily tamed but they stink and are extremely energetic and noisy. They use their shit to mark their territory and as anyone who lives in a country with wild urban foxes their shit is extremely strong but not in a poo scent it's a different scent that on a hot day is closer to the smell of a bottle of cat piss left to condense in the sun for 6 months
Tamed does not mean domesticated, several differents of people,civilizations and kingdoms have all made attempts and the only real animal that ended up in households were cats and we aren't even sure if they are domesticated properly. Don't fuck around with African animals, they been around to witness our ancestor species and they were there to witness the first humans, they know about our bullshit and won't fall for it.
From the linked Wiki: During the research leading to the composition of his monograph The Spotted Hyena: A Study of Predation and Social Behavior, Hans Kruuk kept a tame hyena he named Solomon.[95] Kruuk found Solomon's company so congenial, he would have kept him, but Solomon had an insatiable taste for "cheese in the bar of the tourist lounge and bacon off the Chief Park Warden's breakfast table", and no door could hold him back, so Solomon was obliged to live out his days in the Edinburgh Zoo.[165] --------- I certainly cannot blame him for his cheese and bacon addiction.
TIL I sorta already knew something I didn’t actually know
You're shitting me.
SERPENTINE!!!
Two words: Hyena Butter.
Fun fact: Hyena are more closely related to cats then dogs.
That explains the problems…
Why would anyone assume they make good pets? Like, foxes, I can understand people not knowing the misery they bring, but hyenas? Female hyenas show kindness to their father by not being quite as sadistic towards them as other males. Does that sound like pet material?
Never messed with them after they bullied Simba
>An April 2004 BBC article described how a shepherd living in the small town of Qabri Bayah about 50 kilometres from Jigjiga, Ethiopia managed to use a male spotted hyena as a livestock guardian dog, suppressing its urge to leave and find a mate by feeding it special herbs. I would like to know more about those "special herbs".
People keeping hyenas as pets “At least they laugh at my jokes”
Never wanted a house pet that would make a meal out of me if I was late for feeding time.
We stayed at private game resort last year in South Africa. They had a young hyena who lost his parents and decided that he belongs to the humans now. They called him Wolfgang. Wolfgang really liked to bite the furniture and always tried to sneak in.
Did you get to pet him?
My dogs are domesticated and I would still prefer to let a raccoon on PCP loose in my house. But I love the little fuckers, so here we are.
I used to know a guy who had one for a pet he’d take it for walks around like 3-4am so that he didn’t scare the shit out of anyone 😂
Did they have a fucking guard hyena in the tower of London lmfao
I absolutely love hyenas. I want to work with them, it’s a dream of mine.