Natural Science

Holger Funk

Hyaena. On the naming and localisation of an enigmatic

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 Figures 33, 34: © Estate Late James Walton, Cape Town,

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 .

Contents 1 Introduction...... 7 2 The systematic status of the 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 ...... 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 (1681-1777)...... 51 5.2 C. P. Thunberg’s primary description of the (1820)...... 63 5.3 The discovery and classification of the (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 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 ) (1674) ...... 97 A.7 John Ray on the Papio, the 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

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Acknowledgements The habitat of the four extant hyena covers all of Africa and large parts of . Hyenas living in this enormous area have been described by local and western observers for more than 2000 . 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 , with which Prof. Rainer Voigt, Seminar for Semitic and 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 texts. And finally David Jacobs, M.A. (Cantab), Munich, who provided suggestions for improving the English texts.

Paderborn, April 2010

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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 , 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 , the and even with the .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 by later naturalists and zoologists. In chronological order these were the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), the brown hyena (Parahyaena brunnea) and finally the aardwolf (Proteles cristatus) (chap. 4 and 5). Special attention is paid to the first zoological description of the striped hyena by the traveller and naturalist Engelbert Kaempfer from the end of the 17th century. The value of this widely

1 James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773. Vol. V. London 1790, 107. 2 Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle générale et particulière. Quadrupèdes, Tome 3. Deux-Ponts 1787, 250-262.– An English translation of Buffon’s hyaena article is provided by William Smellie, Natural history, general and particular, by the Count de Buffon. The third edition, in nine volumes. Vol. V. London 1791, 226-238. 7 Introduction unknown report lies in the fact that it actually made the breakthrough to overcome the confused and puzzling ideas about the hyena which had prevailed up to that time (chap. 4). We conclude our survey with a chapter on “imaginary” hyenas in which we deal with animals that have been mistaken for real hyenas. In one of these cases the imagined hyena was apparently nothing but a fantasy creature, comprising nevertheless characteristic traits of two real hyena species (chap. 6). The descriptions of the discovery, naming and localisation of the hyena species are followed by two appendices which contain extensive original source texts (some of which are available in translation for the first time) and pictorial material.

The reason for naming an animal

After an animal has been discovered, it must be named. Following the Old Testament, this is a primordial task of humankind which was assigned by God. In the Book of Genesis we read: “So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all , and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field.” (Gen. 2:19, 20) In former times, this text was commonly understood to mean that God entitled man to subjugate the animal world and to make use of the animals. Nowadays we would interpret the task of naming rather in terms of knowing and understanding any animal, thus being able not only to use but also to protect it and to prevent it from downfall. According to this reading, God did not give the animals, which actually are his creature and as such “good”,3 to humankind to command, but entrusted them to the care of the race. It is a merit of the great Carl von Linné to have recognised the fundamental importance of a meaningful name for the research of a naturalist and to have stressed it in his scientific writings. In the twelfth edition of the Systema naturae Linné hallmarks his new “way” (methodus) as follows: “The method, being the soul of science, evokes every object of nature at first view so that it says its proper name. And this name in turn says which insights could be gained through the centuries about the object bearing this name. Thus the greatest order of nature can be discovered in what appears to be the greatest confusion of things.” 4 The designation of an animal by means of an accurate, unambiguous zoological specific and generic name (similar to the human first name and family name) has on the one hand the practical benefit that zoologists of any national vernacular are able to communicate on a given animal unequivocally. Additionally, the zoological name assigns to the animal a definite rank within the system of nature and denominates in the shortest form important properties which distinguish it from other animals (appearance, behaviour, habitat etc.).

3 ”And God made the beasts of the according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Gen. 1: 25). 4 “Methodus, anima scientiae, indigitat, primo intuitu, quodcunque Corpus naturale, ut hoc corpus dicat propium suum Nomen, et hoc nomen quaecunque de nominato corpore beneficio seculi innotuere, ut sic in summa confusione rerum apparenti, summus conspiciatur Naturae ordo.” Carolus Linnaeus, Systema naturae per regna tria naturae (…). Tomus I. 12th reformed edition. Stockholm 1766, 13. (All translations in this study are ours, if not stated otherwise.) 8 Introduction

The binominal zoological designation of plants and animals which were introduced by Linné against some resistance are also a kind of condensed history of culture and science in the form of semantic pointers – which, however, one must be able to understand. This precondition cannot be taken for granted nowadays and in the course of our treatise we therefore enquire into the origin and meaning of the four hyena genera: What do the strange generic names Crocuta and Proteles for the spotted hyena and the aardwolf actually mean? Why is the brown hyena today characterised as a “by-hyena” (Parahyaena) by its generic name? And finally, what is the original meaning of the name Hyaena itself?

The perception of the hyena

Gus Mills and Heribert Hofer have pointed out another aspect in their standard work on hyenas. According to them the four hyena species have often been confused because they have very similar or identical names in different languages. The authors then continue: “There has been no systematic effort to assess whether such linguistic ambiguities influence people’s perception of and attitudes towards a species. Are differences in the behaviour and ecology of each species recognised, especially behaviours and activities likely to bring a predator into conflict with ?”5 The question posed by Mills and Hofer targets the hyena designations in the numerous languages spoken in Southwest Asia and Africa which they, Rookmaaker and Shortridge collected.6 A multitude of specialists would be necessary to answer the question, for a single person would hardly be able to achieve this. Our study tries to contribute to this answer by asking for the linguistic perception of the first European observers in Greek antiquity as well as those of the later colonists and naturalists in Africa. In concentrating on this linguistic perception, two aspects which are closely connected attract attention: first, newly discovered animals are usually named after well-known animals; and second, they are judged according to the alleged or real benefit or disadvantage for humans.7 To express it from a linguistic angle, the human attitude towards an animal is often predetermined by the way in which it is named (or renamed) – and vice versa.8 Especially in the case of the hyena this act of naming was from the very beginning anything but beneficial. Hyenas have regularly been considered as a kind of , more precisely as a “”. Symptomatic of this view is one of the earliest pieces of evidence from Ktesias, a Greek historian who lived from the end of the fifth, beginning of the fourth century B.C. In his record the two designations “wolf” and “dog” are contracted to the novel term “dog-wolf” ( – kynolykos) to provide the hyena’s name. This “lupisation” of the hyena can be observed from descriptions up to those from the 19th century. If the hyena is not simply equated to the wolf, then at least it was compared to a wolf and contrasted with the wolf’s features.

5 Mills & Hofer (1998: 99). 6 Mills & Hofer (1998: 16, 21, 26, 30), Rookmaaker (1989: 5) and Shortridge (1934: 159-160). 7 On the occasion of the discovery and colonisation of the West African by the Portuguese, P. E. H. Hair pointed out: “Some animals were renamed to fit known animals – the hyena was a ‘wolf’, the bush-cow a ‘buffalo’, any large feline a ‘’. Interest in many wild animals (…) was related principally either to their economic product or to alleged medical properties of some parts of their body.” (Hair 1997, I 19-20). 8 This is discussed amongst linguists under the term Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis; for details, see Pütz & Verspoor (2000). 9 Introduction

From the very beginning the hyena shared the fate of the wolf, which itself had had a bad reputation from time immemorial. Even in the Old Testament the prophets murmur in a portentous tone of an “evening wolf”, and since then the wolf has been the very archetype of all that is evil and malicious and harmful to humans.9 The first settlers at the also had this understanding and have transferred it to the spotted hyena, an animal entirely unknown to them. According to Peter Kolbe, one of the earliest observers at the Cape, the spotted hyena which he, like the settlers, considers to be a kind of wolf (“Tigerwolf”) is a “pernicious beast” that is said to be dangerous to the and especially “very hateful to ”.10 Similarly to the real wolf in such a pernicious animal was fought with all means, and so the history of the African hyena is at the same time a history of its persecution. Hyenas were poisoned, caught in pits, lured into special stone traps, called Wolwehokke, or killed by spring guns; finally every shooting of a hyena was rewarded with a special prize.11 And when hyenas were not persecuted by the settlers like the aardwolf which feeds almost entirely on insects, then this species was hunted by the indigenous people because its flesh was esteemed as a delicacy. Apparently, the hatred of everything that was considered to be a wolf was universal, and it would be oversimplifying things to reduce this attitude to the ruthless settlement policy of the European colonists. The afore-mentioned Peter Kolbe reports how the native people organised real revenge campaigns when a predator (, , hyena) had damaged their livestock. The furore of the natives then knew no bounds and animals they got hold of were tortured to death in a sadistic manner. “If they meet with any Beast of Prey at those Times, they strive who shall be first in Assailing ‘em. Their Passion for Revenge shuts out Fear from every of ‘em: And every one encounters every Danger with an astonishing Intrepidity. They clear all the neighbouring Country of those ravenous Creatures: And such of ‘em as they take alive they put to the most cruel lingering Death they can invent.”12

Overcoming the old hyena image

Besides the persecution by humans, another factor determined the history of the hyena from seventeenth to the nineteenth century, namely overcoming the wrong ideas and prejudices which have moulded the image of the hyena from antiquity up to the Renaissance and beyond. According to this image the hyena is both fearsome and cowardly, it is hermaphroditic, feeds on carrion and steals corpses from graves.13 Especially the latter was one of the most stubborn prejudices which Aristotle had already spread (Historia animalium, VIII, 5). This cast the hyena in a worse light than had ever been imputed even to the wolf. Desecration of a corpse or of a grave (juridically violatio sepulcri)

9 Jer. 5:6, Hab. 1:8 and Zeph. 3:3. On the wolf as symbol of the evil, see Mech & Boitani (2003: 293) and Coleman (2004). 10 Peter Kolbe, Caput Bonae Spei hodiernum, das ist: Vollständige Beschreibung des africanischen Vorgebürges der Guten Hofnung (…), Nürnberg 1719, 172 (missing in the English translation from 1731). Consequently Kolbe speculates whether the South African wolf (i.e. the hyena) could have been the evening wolf of the prophets. See also Figure 28 und Figure 30. 11 Full particulars on this subject are to be found in chapter 5. 12 Peter Kolben, The present state of the Cape of Good-Hope (…). Vol. I. London 1731, 183. 13 For more information, see Glickman (1995). 10 Introduction has at all times been one of the most evil crimes, and it was exactly for this outrage that the hyena served as symbol. A famous book from 1595 which includes all kinds of animal symbols and emblems depicts an “ugly hyena” plundering a grave (see Figure 7). The motto for this picture is a citation from Virgil’s Aeneid, thus indicating a universal abhorrence of this sacrilege spanning both antiquity and the Christian era. In this tradition, in 1635 the Spanish Jesuit and zoologist Juan Eusebio Nieremberg designated the hyena directly as a “corpse-eating animal” (Necrophagum Animal) 14 – of course without ever having seen a hyena himself. This condemnable image of the hyena was prepared and played through by the writers of classical antiquity and of the Hellenistic periods with all its embellishments and variants. It was intensified and directed towards a specifically Christian comprehension by the so-called ,15 then again by the , the allegorical pictorial representations of the which are characterised by an inclination to dichotomies, dividing the world into and hell, good and bad, Christ and Devil. In this view of the world the hyena was always on the losing side, it was a “bad” animal, quite in contrast for instance to the “panther” (pantera), which was considered to be a “true” animal.16 All these images of the hyena go back essentially to a single writer, to (23-79 A.D.). There are several reasons why the antique description of the hyena which prevailed was not that which was of the highest quality – the concise, empirically-oriented description by Aristotle – but Pliny’s excessive description which was based on second- and third-hand information. On the one hand the fact that Pliny’s Naturalis historia was at all times eagerly received played a role, whereas no interest was shown in the zoological writings of Aristotle for centuries.17 On the other hand it must also be taken account that Pliny, in contrast to the sober style of Aristotle, wrote in an “entertaining” manner. Thus it was possible that Pliny, almost single-handedly, influenced and distorted the occidental image of the hyena through to modern times. He initiated a process in which the perception of the hyena was first fictionalised18 and then increasingly demonised – Hyaena est diabolus, as a mediaeval clergyman19 once declared. Against this backdrop, the history of the hyena is simultaneously a history of overcoming Pliny. Pliny was for a long time an undisputed authority, and open-minded scholars were needed to question this estimation. The first to cast doubt on Pliny in a rather moderate manner and without naming him directly was John Ray, who stated: “The ancients really make up a lot of fables about the hyena.”20 From then on Pliny was not taken too seriously.

14 At least Nieremberg relies on Augerius Gislenius Busbequius (Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq) who in 1554 had observed hyenas personally in the Ottoman Empire; see Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Historia Naturae, maxime peregrinae, Antwerp 1635, 181 and the text A5 in the appendix. See also the numerous drawings of grave- plundering hyenas in the mediaeval bestiaries, rendered by Hassig (1995), and Clark (2006: 131). Finally refer to the chapter “Hyenas desecrating graves at the Cape” in Skead (1980: 99-100). 15 An anonymous compilation of didactic texts from the second to fourth century A.D. which were widespread in numerous adaptations and translations. The animal descriptions of this corpus were the models for the medieval bestiaries; for more information, see Diekstra (1985), Curley (2009) and Heider (1851). 16 See Hassig (1995: 155-166). 17 See Lennox (1994). 18 The first Roman writer who mentioned the hyena was the poet Ovid (Met. XV, 408-410). Ovid’s subject is – as expected – the hyena’s ostensible ambi-sexuality. 19 Possibly Rabanus Maurus (c. 780-856), the authorship is controversial; cited according to Lauzi (1988: 554). 20 “Verum Veteres de Hyaena multa fabulantur” – John Ray (Joannes Rajus), Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini generis, London 1693, 158. 11 Introduction

Thus for example Engelbert Kaempfer him rather perfunctorily while describing the striped hyena. Other authors put the case more clearly, Thomas Pennant for instance stating: “The antients were wild in their opinion of the Hyaena”,21 but he too did not name Pliny directly. Eventually this was done by the Dutchman Willem Bosman, who, when describing the fauna on the West African Gold Coast remarked gruffly: “Turning to Pliny, I found him so ignorantly mistaken, that I am resolved in my Descriptions of Animals not to name him.”22 Thanks to the courageous advances by researchers such as Ray, Kaempfer, Pennant and Bosman, Pliny (and his epigones), who had until then been the undisputed chief witness, was put on trial, and this finally enabled the way to be cleared for a new, unbiased view of the hyena, without the traditional prejudices and rumours. Wrong tracks in hyena research

New insights – this is another lesson from the history of the Hyaenidae family – are rarely achieved by a single scholar or in a straightforward process. Almost every primary description of the different hyena species contains errors, some of which are ludicrous and incomprehensible from a present-day point of view. Excellent scholars, such as John Ray, have become obsessed with wrong ideas which nevertheless helped them to progress because they forced them to think differently. We also want to follow this aspect of the hyena history and therefore round off our study with a chapter on “imaginary” hyenas whose existence, at least for some time, seemed to have been authenticated (chap. 6). One of these imaginary hyenas is the “Papio” which can be considered as a paradigm for the above-mentioned linguistic ambiguities that direct our perception. The second imaginary hyena is the “Sea wolf” (Lupus marinus), a fantastic creature combining traits of the striped and of the brown hyena. Its “discoverer” was the notable French naturalist Pierre Belon who, as he assures, eye-witnessed this animal in the English Channel and in the North Sea. Such a shrewd mind as Thomas Pennant, to whom hyena research owes much, saw no reason to doubt this even as late as 1781 in his History of Quadrupeds. To this day we do not know exactly which animal was actually meant by the sea wolf. It remains the last mystery in the history of the hyena discovery.

21 Thomas Pennant, Synopsis of Quadrupeds. Chester 1771, 161. 22 William Bosman. A new and accurate description of the coast of Guinea, divided into the Gold, the Slave, and the (…). London 1705, Part II, 245. 12

2 The systematic status of the hyena today

The Hyaenidae family

Today, “hyena” is a generic designation for all members of the Hyaenidae family23 within the superfamily of the cat-like ( or Feloidea). The origins of the Hyaenidae family date back to the Miocene or Oligocene, i.e. about 25 to 29 million years from the present day, when the Hyaenidae separated from () and Herpestidae ().24 The exact status of the hyena is disputed ever since nineteenth century. Some researchers postulate two families, besides the Hyaenidae a second Protelidae family with the aardwolf as single member, while other scientists divide hyenas into two subfamilies, the Hyaeninae and the Protelinae. We do not intend to go into further details here and follow the assumption of just one Hyaenidae family.

The Hyaenidae family comprises three (or four) genera (Crocuta, Hyaena, Parahyaena, Proteles) with four species (including several ), which differ clearly from each other with regard to their appearance and way of living. The four extant species probably originated in Africa 7-15 million years ago. These species are:25

1. The strong spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) Weight 45 kg (m) and 55 kg (f), more than 80 kg in individuals from southern Africa; total body size 1.30 m, shoulder height 75 cm. The spotted hyena has a short, obtuse muzzle and round ears. Contrary to an obstinate prejudice, it is not a like the striped hyena, but a true predator; normally it hunts on its own or in small groups of two to five animals. Spotted hyenas are organised in consisting of very few (three) to up to more than 50, at most 80 adult and adolescent individuals. The clans are dominated and led by females; the males are always lower-ranking. The females have male-like genitalia.

2. The smaller striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) Weight between 26-41 kg (m) and 26-34 kg (f); body size without tail 1-1.15 m, shoulder height 66-75 cm. The striped hyena has a pointed muzzle and erect ears; there are five subspecies. It feeds upon carrion and remains of other predator’s prey, as well as fruit and vegetables, but also preys on small animals of any kind. The striped hyena hunts on its own or in small groups, covering great distances as it does so (nomadising).

23 The Hyaenidae family was introduced into systematic zoology by J. E. Gray (1821: 302). Until then hyenas were considered as a kind of or (), e.g. hyaena in Linné. 24 Details in Werdelin & Solounias (1991) and Koepfli et al. (2006). 25 All information according to Mills & Hofer (1998) and Koepfli et al. (2006). 13