Crocuta crocuta spelaea
(Cave hyena)
Name: Crocuta
crocuta spelaea (Cave hyena hyena)
Phonetic: Cro-cu-tah cro-cu-tah spe-lay-ah.
Classification: Chordata, Mammalia, Carnivora,
Hyaenidae.
Species: Crocuta crocuta spelaea.
Diet: Carnivore.
Size: Roughly 1 meter high at the shoulder,
1.5 meters long, 225 kilograms in weight.
Known locations: Across Eurasia.
Time period: Pleistocene.
Fossil representation: Multiple remains.
The
cave
hyena is so closely related to todays spotted hyena (Crocuta
crocuta) from Africa that it is actually considered a sub
species to
this genus. Some however have still raised the notion about whether
remains named as cave hyena should be classed as a distinct sub group,
although the majority of palaeontologists agree that they are
different enough to keep them separated. This difference is seen in
the longer femur (thigh bone) and humerus (upper foreleg bone)
of the cave hyena, something that is seen as an adaptation for more
efficient locomotion.
As
can be guessed by the name
cave hyenas are associated with living in caves, although they may
have also taken up dens in more open areas when climatic conditions
were suitable. By taking up residence in caves, cave hyenas could
have sheltered from the worst of the cold conditions of the Pleistocene
ice ages. This would have been a safer environment for them to raise
young, as well as drag back bones from scavenged carcasses which
could be gnawed upon at leisure. This explains the wide variety of
different animal remains that can be found in caves that had regular
hyena habitation.
Cave
hyenas were predators
and scavengers of the open plains much like their spotted African
cousins are today. While hyenas are better known as scavengers,
they have been well documented hunting and killing their own prey.
While study of animal remains in cave hyena dens has yielded the
conclusion that cave hyenas would eat any animal they could get,
there is an overwhelming abundance of remains that are from wild
horses like Przewalski's horse (Equus ferus przewalskii)
and huge
woolly rhinoceroses like Coelodonta.
Both of these animals were
abundant upon the open plains of Pleistocene Eurasia, and their
increased presence of remains in cave hyena dens strongly suggests that
these animals were actively preyed upon by cave hyena. Cave hyena
also seem to have fed upon the cave bear Ursus
spelaeus, although
it’s not certain if this is active predation or scavenging of an
already dead bear.
Cave
hyenas have a long
association with Neanderthals, early homonids that were closely
related to the ancestors of modern humans. One area of conflict
between cave hyenas and Neanderthals was competition for cave space
as both used caves for shelter, with some areas revealing that some
caves that were inhabited by cave hyenas would be taken over by
Neanderthals, to be taken over by cave hyenas again, to later be
re-occupied by Neanderthals, that would again be later populated by
cave hyena in an ever repeating process. This could suggest that one
group would drive the other out, just for a stronger group to retake
the cave by force, or that the occupants would only occupy certain
caves for so long, say the winter months before moving on to new
areas in search of food.
Caves
were not the only point
of potential conflict between Neanderthals and cave hyena, as since
Neanderthals hunted animals themselves, cave hyena, quite possibly
in large groups, could have challenged the Neanderthals for the
carcass. More grisly fossil evidence also suggests that
Neanderthals were even eaten by cave hyena, perhaps actively
hunted out in the open or perhaps caught sleeping in a cave that was
raided in the night by hyena. There is also evidence and theories to
suggest that cave hyena were responsible for preventing early humans
from crossing the Bering Strait land bridge from Asia into North
America. The earliest known remains of humans in Alaska date back
towards the end of the Pleistocene when the cave hyena had pretty much
vanished from the landscape. The Neanderthals in Europe did manage
to do one service for future generations however, and this is their
cave art that has been left in several locations. Cave hyena in this
art have been depicted as having dark spots on their coats just like
spotted hyena do today, revealing that cave hyena did not just
have skeletons similar to spotted hyena, but also an external
appearance like them as well.
To
date there is no
definitive evidence for cave hyena hunting in groups, but then there
is also no proof that they were solitary creatures either. Their
closest living relative the spotted hyena, which currently fills a
similar ecological niche, is usually seen living in groups and by
association is quite reasonable to assume that cave hyena also lived in
groups. How big these groups were depends upon the environments
ability to support it, and given the harsher climate conditions of
Eurasia in the Pleistocene it’s possible to conclude that on
average, packs of cave hyena were not made up of as many individuals
as their modern African relatives.
As
powerful and as dangerous
cave hyenas were, they could not take on the greatest challenge of
them all; climate change. During the closing stages of the
Pleistocene the open plains that cave hyena called home began to be
replaced by forest, which subsequently saw a decline in their
favoured prey species which were not as suited to these new
ecosystems. The increasing expanse of forests also brought increased
competition from other predators such as wolves with it. Wolves had
always been active in the same lands as cave hyena, but the two never
really competed before as wolves were always more active in the forests
while cave hyena were on the open plains. The increase in forests was
therefore in favour of the wolves that were already adapted to this
environment, and with wolves also hunting in packs, cave hyenas
could not rely upon an advantage of numbers to compete.
With
not as much large prey
around and increased competition from better adapted predators, cave
hyena had to make do with smaller animals that offered less
sustenance. This is where the larger physical size of the cave hyena
began to count against it as a larger body requires a greater intake of
food. As soon as the cave hyena was living just below the bare
minimum level of food required to survive their fate was already
decided.
Further reading
- Cave occupation during Palaeolithic times: Man and/or Hyena?" in The
Role of Early Humans in the accumulation if European Lower and Middle
Palaeolithic bone assemblages. - Ergebnisse eines Kolloquiums, vol. 42,
Monographien. Edited by S. Gaudzinski and E. Turner, pp. 73-88. Bonn:
Verlag des R�misch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums. - P. Fosse - 1999.
- Gnawed Bones Tell Tales - ASU Research - Lynette Summerill - 2003.
- Comparative ecology and taphonomy of spotted hyenas, humans, and
wolves in Pleistocene Italy. - Revue de Pal�obiologie, Gen�ve. 23 (2) :
771-785. ISSN 0253-6730 - Mary C. Stiner - 2004.
- The presence of cave hyaena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea)
in the Upper
Palaeolithic rock art of Europe. - Historia naturalis bulgarica, 16:
159-166. - N. Spassov & T. Stoytchev - 2004.
- The population history of extant and extinct hyenas. - Molecular
Biology and Evolution,. 22: 2435-2443.- N. Rohland, J. L. Pollack, D.
Nagel, C. Beauval, J. Airvaux, S. Paabo & M. Hofreiter - 2005.
- Prey deposits and den sites of the Upper Pleistocene hyena Crocuta
crocuta spelaea (Goldfuss, 1823) in horizontal and vertical
caves of
the Bohemian Karst (Czech Republic). Bulletin of Geosciences 81(4),
237–276 (25 figures). - Czech Geological Survey, Prague. ISSN
1214-1119. - C. G. Diedrich & K. Zak - 2006.
- Comparison of Crocuta crocuta crocuta and Crocuta
crocuta spelaea
through computer tomography. - Ph.D. Thesis, Univ. Vienna, Austria. -
M. Dockner - 2006.
- A View to a Kill: Investigating Middle Palaeolithic Subsistence Using
an Optimal Foraging Perspective. - Sidestone Press. pp. 127-143. -
Gerrit Leendert Dusseldorp - 2008.
- Were the Late Pleistocene climatic changes responsible for the
disappearance of the European spotted hyena populations? - Quaternary
Science Reviews, 29: 2027-2035. - S. Varela, J. M. Lobo, J. Rodr�guez
& P. Batra - 2010.
- Are herbivores and spotted hyena extinctions at the end of the
Pleistocene related? - Zona Arqueologica, 13: 76-91. - S. Varela, J. M.
Lobo & J. Rodr�guez - 2010.
- Specialized horse killers in Europe – foetal horse remains in the
Late Pleistocene Srbsko Chlum-Kom�n Cave hyena den in the Bohemian
Karst (Czech Republic) and actualistic comparisons to modern African
spotted hyenas as zebra hunters. - Quaternary International, vol. 220,
no. 1-2, pp. 174-187. - C. Diedrich - 2010.
-
Coprolites as a source of information on the genome and diet of the
cave hyena. - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
279 (1739): 2825–2830. - C. Bon, V. Berthonaud, F. Maksud, K. Labadie,
J. Poulain, F. Artiguenave, P. Wincker, J.-M. Aury & J.-M.
Elalouf
- 2012.
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