I know two things from photographing hyenas. The first is that they have a few idiosyncrasies: they run funny, smell funny, and, with their outsized heads and large ears, look funny too. Maybe they are just laughing at themselves—a good sign in any mammal.

I don’t think many of us know exactly what hyenas look like because they are the least photographed of all the storied animals in Africa. We are not familiar with them because we don’t revere them. Indeed, to be called a hyena has become a term of abuse, which seems rather unfair to a species that adds to the rich fauna of Sub-Saharan Africa. Hyenas are useful additions to animated films and musicals, as they can be demonized and portrayed as the bad guys.

But here is another thing about hyenas that slightly plays toward their villain stereotype: they don’t respect camera equipment at all. I am sometimes asked, “Which animal destroys the most equipment?” Elephants kick the remote cameras in Amboseli, and lions confiscate the cameras, but get bored after a while. Bears and bison, however, could not
be less interested. But the adult female hyena in this photograph picked up some of my equipment from the ground, and I watched from the safety of my cage as it was broken into 30 different pieces over a five-minute period of intense brutality. It was the first and last time I will leave camera equipment on the ground if there are hyenas in the area.

Luckily, the memory card, which contained this photograph, was not a victim of the assault. The image was taken from my cage on a 58mm lens.
I am not sure many have tried that with a bunch of hyenas before. I certainly would not take risks with them.