His piss-take of George Galloway's Cantona-eque concession speech ("The hyena can bounce on the lion's grave, but it can never be a lion …") brilliantly combines dopeyness and disdain.
Children who learned at grandpa's knee that the hyena is an evil, snarling beast that haunts the night are sometimes perplexed to see real hyenas placidly sunbathing.
Dr Theis compared one of the solitary species, the striped hyena, with the gregarious one, the spotted hyena, which lives in clans that have as many as 90 animals in them.
TO TELL a hyena it stank would not be an insult.
It has been known for decades that these animals communicate using a pungent material called hyena butter.
They are less obscure now, though, thanks to the work of Kevin Theis of Michigan State University, who has spent much of his career analysing the contents of hyena pouches.
But there are probably a lot of more subtle messages about an individual's state of health, perhaps, or its position, particularly if female, in the hierarchy.There is also the question of how a hyena tells its bacteria what to do—and, indeed, how the whole bizarre system evolved in the first place.
And, at a session at this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he shared his conclusions with an eager audience.In this section In the beginning was the word Jet set Stacking the deck Spot the difference Artful illusion ReprintsThere are four species of hyena, three of which are solitary and one gregarious.
Now, with the museum recently opened, what began as a response to a tragedy has been made official zoo policy: every animal that dies becomes an exhibit.So it is that frozen monkeys grace fake boughs, an ostrich stares forever into the distance, and, in a savannah scene, a slavering hyena drips plastic blood over the corpse of a zebra, under the gaze of an angry bear and a placid lion.
But a truck or a hyena or a policeman are likely to do something more interesting, like speeding or howling or arresting someone.
The park was home to 2,000 elephant, as well as lion, leopard, hyena and all sorts of antelope.
