Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, therefore I was going to talk about the upcoming Marvel™ Zombies special, but then Textbooks Travels YouTube channel presented a video about five hyena species, including the one new species, and I had to watch – hyenas are some of my favorite animals, you know?
Anyhow, after going through about 30 minutes of
video footage of the various hyena, team TT finally reached the supposed new
species in question – and it is the aardwolf. Pause.
Here is the thing. There are four modern species of
hyena, and they are all specialists in their unique ways, all are different
from each other in various different ways. In case of the aardwolf, it is the
smallest and the weakest hyena species, one that is specialized in feeding on ants
and termites, it is an unassuming and nocturnal animal, most people in Africa
(especially the not-tourists) are ignoring or just unaware of it, and for the
rest of the world, the situation is not much better. That is one.
Two is that there are two aardwolf subspecies. Pause.
Let us backtrack a bit. Out of the four modern hyena
species, the spotted and the brown hyenas are monotypic; there is just one
species of each without any greater genetic variation. With the striped hyena
and the aardwolf, the situation is different. The striped hyena has up to five
subspecies, but they all differ from each other mostly by where they live –
from northern Africa (the Sahara desert) to Middle East, to Central Asia, to
India, (mostly the north-east – like its’ sister species the brown hyena, the
striped hyena is primarily a desert dweller/specialist). The aardwolf is less
extreme, but it too has two subspecies – one in east Africa and the second in
the south Africa – that have some minor physical differences, and thus they are
two separate subspecies – but they differ from each other primarily by where
they live. Team TT took this concept and proclaimed that no, the two
populations are two different species of the aardwolf (aka two different hyena
species), but so far there’s no consensus on that, so I’m going to call out
them (him) and say that their proclamation about there being five hyena species
in the modern world is wrong. Anything else?
…The aardwolf really got the short end of the stick
in the TT hyena video – it had the least amount of footage & screen time,
it had to share with the bat-eared fox. The two are not related at all, the
hyenas are part of the cat half of the mammal carnivore family tree, and the
wild dogs are the more ancient clan out of the two. That is part of the reason
as to why wild dogs are found all over the world these days, (excluding
Antarctica), while the hyenas are not. Just like some of their cat cousins, they
tried to imitate the dogs, to try to beat them at their own game – and outside
of Africa, they failed. The spotted hyena is as a formidable a pack hunter as
any dog, but it is savannah animal, unlike the brown and striped hyenas (or the
big cats such as the lion and the leopard); it does not do well in the desert,
it cannot cross the Sahara into Eurasia. The brow hyena, of course, is hemmed
in by the two oceans on one hand, and it does not enter the savannah, because
there it would be outcompeted by the local predators/scavengers before it
reached the African east (where Africa is connected to Eurasia). The striped hyena
is already there, of course, but it is half the size and muscle of the spotted
hyena and just like the brown hyena, it is a desert specialist and does not
enter more fertile areas, (such as the Southeast Asian jungles, for example). In
addition, the aardwolf is an insectivore, it feeds on insects and as long as they
are plentiful, (and they are), it is happy. So is the bat-eared fox, of course,
but we are talking hyenas here, not foxes and other wild dogs.
…The point here is that without humans being in the
picture, the hyenas are doing just fine, even though about 87.5% of their
global population is in Africa. By living there, they avoid competing for food
resources with the wild dogs, and thus both them and the wild canines are
satisfied.
In addition, where does it leave the Marvel™
zombies? In their own part of MCU multiverse, of course – they were introduced In
Marvel’s™ now finished ‘What if?’ animated series, and it will be somewhat interesting
to see as to how Earth-89521 will deal with the undead threat. The hyenas, in
fact, should be of little help there – the aardwolf is an insectivore and does
not eat carrion to begin with, the spotted hyena prefers to hunt live prey, and
the brown and the striped hyenas, while scavengers, are nowhere as formidable
as it is. Therefore, the humans of that dimension will have to defeat the
zombies one way or another, mostly by themselves – and we will have to wait
until September 24, 2025 to see how it plays out…
Well, this is it for now, see you all soon.
