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Hyaena. on the Naming and Localisation of an Enigmatic Animal

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Natural Science Holger Funk Hyaena. On the naming and localisation of an enigmatic animal Holger Funk Hyaena On the naming and localisation of an enigmatic animal Copyright HolgerFunk 2010, except for the following pictures: Figures 8, 9 © Museo Nazionale Prenestino in Palazzo Barberini a Roma, Italy Figures 14, 15: © Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Italy Figures 18, 20: © The Sloane Collection at the British Library, UK Figure 30: © Collection of the Library of Parliament, Cape Town, South Africa Figures 33, 34: © Estate Late James Walton, Cape Town, South Africa Atqui nullum est animal in quo non aliquid suum, illustre, rarum: imo non aliquid, ut ita dicam, divinitatis spectetur. There is surely no animal which does not have something unique, something illustrious, something exceptional; yes, even something divine, as I would like to call it, can be seen in it. Conrad Gesner, Historia animalium I, 1551, Dedicatory letter To Hans Kruuk who opened my eyes to the uniqueness of hyenas. Contents 1 Introduction....................................................................................................................... 7 2 The systematic status of the hyena today...................................................................... 13 3 Confusion – the hyena in the older zoological discourse............................................. 15 3.1 The zoological basics (Gesner, Aldrovandi) ............................................................. 15 3.2 Hyena descriptions from antiquity to Renaissance.................................................... 20 4 Breakthrough – Engelbert Kaempfer’s report on the Persian hyena (1712)............ 33 4.1 The locality................................................................................................................ 33 4.2 The report.................................................................................................................. 37 4.3 Linné’s adaption of Kaempfer’s report ..................................................................... 45 5 Completion – The ascertainment of the entire Hyaenidae family.............................. 51 5.1 The protracted discovery of the spotted hyena (1681-1777)..................................... 51 5.2 C. P. Thunberg’s primary description of the brown hyena (1820)............................ 63 5.3 The discovery and classification of the aardwolf (1783-1882) ................................. 70 6 Imaginary hyenas............................................................................................................ 79 6.1 Papio .......................................................................................................................... 79 6.2 Lupus marinus ........................................................................................................... 83 Appendix A: Source texts ...................................................................................................... 87 A.1 Ctesias of Cnidus on the Krokottas (fourth century B.C.)......................................... 87 A.2 Aristotle on the hyena (after 350 B.C.) ..................................................................... 89 A.3 Conrad Gesner on the Papio (1551).......................................................................... 91 A.4 Pierre Belon on the Lupus marinus (1553)................................................................ 93 A.5 Busbecq’s report on hyenas in the Ottoman Empire (1581) ..................................... 94 A.6 Pietro della Valle on the Caftar (Persian striped hyena) (1674) ............................... 97 A.7 John Ray on the Papio, the badger and the hyena (1693) ......................................... 98 A.8 Willem Bosman on the Boshond (West African spotted hyena) (1704) ................. 100 A.9 Engelbert Kaempfer on the Persian (striped) hyena (1712) .................................... 101 A.10 Peter Kolbe on the Tigerwolf (South African spotted hyena) (1719) ..................... 105 A.11 J. C. P. Erxleben (1777) and Thomas Pennant (1771) on the spotted hyena .......... 107 A.12 Anders Sparrman on the aardwolf (1783) ............................................................... 109 A.13 Carl Peter Thunberg on the brown hyena (Hyaena brunnea) (1820) ...................... 110 A.14 Andrew Smith on the brown hyena (Hyaena villosa) (1827).................................. 115 A.15 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire on the Proteles (aardwolf) (1824) .......................... 119 Appendix B: Illustrations .................................................................................................... 121 B.1 Pictorial material...................................................................................................... 121 B.2 Pioneers in hyena research ...................................................................................... 140 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 143 5 Acknowledgements The habitat of the four extant hyena species covers all of Africa and large parts of Asia. Hyenas living in this enormous area have been described by local and western observers for more than 2000 years. Many names have been given to the hyenas in the wide range of languages in which they have been described. Anyone who attempts to reconstruct the history of the naming and localisation of the hyenas will therefore soon reach the limits of their linguistic expertise and must rely on the help of experts. I had the good fortune to receive the generous support of various scholars in this respect. This applies in particular to the languages of which I have only a rudimentary knowledge, such as Dutch and Swedish, for which I enjoyed the unhesitating assistance of Dr. Chris Smeenk, Naturalis Museum in Leiden, Holland, and Elin Behrens, University of Paderborn, and also to the languages which I do not understand at all, such as Amharic, with which Prof. Rainer Voigt, Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies at the Free University of Berlin, had the patience to help me. My thanks are also due to Prof. Adam Jones, University of Leipzig, Prof. John Thornton, Boston University, and Dr. Beatrix Heintze, University of Frankfurt, for their help in researching into Africa. Not only did they share their specialist knowledge with me; they also provided me with valuable unpublished material. In the course of such a study one can become beset by doubts about whether a topic which one considers important is also interesting for other people. Stephen E. Glickman, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, who has himself provided an important contribution to our topic, encouraged me to continue with my work. Last but not least I would like to thank two gentlemen without whose help this project would not have been possible: Dr. Heiner Emonds, Paderborn, who from the very beginning stood by my side as a critical reader, source of ideas and helper in translating the Greek and Latin texts. And finally David Jacobs, M.A. (Cantab), Munich, who provided suggestions for improving the English texts. Paderborn, April 2010 6 1 Introduction Nomina si nescis, perit et cognitio rerum. If you do not know the names, then perishes also the cognition of things. Linnaeus, Philosophia botanica, 1751, § 210 Within the realm of knowledge regions exist which have been inaccessible to trusted insights for a long time. Knowledge about the hyena is one of these regions, as we can read in a travelogue of the Scottish naturalist James Bruce, written at the end of the 18th century: “There are few animals, whose history has passed under the considerations of naturalists, that have given occasion to so much confusion and equivocation as the Hyaena has done. It began very early among the ancients, and the moderns have fully contributed their share.”1 Bruce was not alone with his criticism. In a volume of the Histoire Naturelle by the French Comte de Buffon published shortly before, the author sneers at previous zoologists who have confused the hyena with no less than four different species, namely with the jackal, the wolverine, the civet cat and even with the baboon.2 Even though there is some similarity to the hyena in all four animals, as Buffon concedes, careful attention should have ensured that the naturalists noticed the major differences, e.g. the fact that hyena and wolverine live in quite diverse habitats. But these zoologists who had evidently never sighted a hyena personally had blindly trusted their sources, with the result that more absurdities are spread about the hyena than about any other animal. Like Bruce, Buffon mentions not only classical writers but also contemporary scholars as originators of these errors. Goals and structure of this study In the present study we want to retrace how the wrong perceptions about the hyena, the “histoires absurdes” (Buffon), developed and how they were overcome by several scholars in a protracted process. Due to their research work we know today that the mysterious animal “hyaena” comprises four species which together build up the Hyaenidae family. We will start by introducing these species shortly (chap. 2). Thereafter we return to the beginning of the hyena history and outline the classical Greco- Roman reports on the hyena and how until the Renaissance and beyond these modelled the occidental perceptions of this animal (chap. 3). Then we examine how the single members of the Hyaenidae family were discovered, described and named
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