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News
l December 2007 |
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Monitoring
Hyenas via Satellite
Desert-dwelling spotted hyenas apparently roam
territories of several thousand square kilometres. This
is the conclusion drawn by biologist Dr Ingrid Wiesel
after the preliminary perusal of data collected on a spotted
hyena, who lives in the area north of Garub, in south-western
Namibia, and wears a collar with GPS transmitter. Wiesel
anaesthetized the animal near the drinking trough at Garub
in the middle of October and fitted it with the collar.
This biologist from Hamburg in Germany wrote her doctoral
thesis on the brown hyena and runs the Brown Hyena Research
Project in Lüderitz. Her research on spotted hyenas
around Garub is part of a three-year project concerning
the conflict between hyena and man on the eastern fringe
of the Namib.
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Interaction between
the hyenas and the Wild Horses constitutes one of the
project’s fascinating dimensions. Horse expert Dr
Telané Greyling has found tracks of hyenas on various
occasions and even spotted the animals. She suggested
that the den and ‘hunting grounds’ of these
hyenas might well be in the Khoichab River area, about
80 km (!) north of Garub, where Oryx antelope, springbok
and ostrich can be found. When these animals start to
migrate, the hyenas are likely to look for alternative
prey in the area of the Wild Horses, says Greyling. |
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Dr
Wiesel feels that this is quite plausible. “Spotted
hyena in desert areas need a large territory in
order to survive. The first lot of downloaded data
also shows that the hyena with the collar came to
the drinking trough at Garub about every three weeks.
But it is still too early to determine the core
territory of the hyena.” The device on the
collar records the animal’s exact location
by GPS (the Global Positioning System via satellite)
every hour, as well as data such as altitude, temperature
and intensity of movement. The data are saved by
date and with the exact time. It can be downloaded
with a special receiver from a distance between
500 and
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The female spotted hyena after being darted and
collared in mid October 2007 at Garub.
Photo: Dr. Ingrid Wiesel
(Brown Hyena Research Project) |
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1,000 metres.
The Succulent Karoo Ecosystem Programme (SKEP) has sponsored
two GPS collars; a second hyena will be fitted with a
collar as soon as the opportunity presents itself. |
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Carcass
of a wild horse foal most likely being fed on by hyenas
(June 2007). Photo: Sven-Eric Kanzler |
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Spotted hyenas
are primarily regarded as scavengers, but they also prey
on old, sick or wounded animals and occasionally opportunistically
they kill healthy animals. It does occur from time to
time that foals are separated from their mothers or from
the herd and become prey to the hyenas. Telané
Greyling has witnessed the result of a hyena attack on
a month old foal sleeping some distance away from its
mother. “In this case the mare was inexperienced
and failed to warn and defend her foal”, she says. |
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Greyling does
not interfere in cases like this. "One has to respect
the fact that these are wild horses, not domestic ones",
she explains. "They do not live in a stable or paddock,
but in a natural environment - therefore they are exposed
to predators like any other game animal. Hyenas essentially
serve the purpose of keeping populations healthy, no matter
whether it is Oryx antelope, springbok, ostrich or wild
horse.” |
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© 2007 Nature Investments (Pty) Ltd |
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- More on the Brown Hyena Research Project
at www.strandwolf.org.za
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