“A spotted hyena's giggling 'laugh' is really a sound that shares excitement or stress, not happiness.”
Spotted hyenas live in complex female-led clans across sub-Saharan grasslands and open woodland. They are capable cooperative hunters as well as efficient scavengers, with crushing jaws that let them consume bone and extract food other predators leave behind.
By An Nguyen · Published · Updated
Crocuta crocuta Carnivora Hyaenidae
Measured against the 176 species profiled on this site. Each figure is converted to one unit system from the published range on the page, so the ranks are computed, not quoted.
| Measure | This species | Rank here | Exceeds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body mass | 86.2 kg | #54 of 176#39 of 90 Mammalia | 70% |
| Body length | 1.68 m | #62 of 176#41 of 90 Mammalia | 65% |
| Top speed | 59.5 km/h | #24 of 75#13 of 46 Mammalia | 68% |
| Lifespan in the wild | 12 yr | #120 of 169#69 of 85 Mammalia | 29% |
Closest in body mass
Ranks use the upper end of each published adult range, so they compare typical large adults rather than records, and metrics with no published number are left out rather than estimated. The full table is downloadable from the species dataset, and any two species can be put side by side in the comparison tool.
Browse photographs of spotted hyena across habitat, behavior, anatomy, and life stages.
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Core article
A closer look at habitat, diet, behavior, reproduction, and conservation.
The spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) is a large African savanna carnivore that both hunts and scavenges. Its jaws can crack big bones, and its vocal repertoire — giggles, whoops, and more — carries a whole social vocabulary. Far from a mere opportunist, it is an active hunter that kills much of its own prey and lives in structured, female-led clans where rank, alliances, and communication govern access to food and breeding.
Spotted hyenas have a sloping back, with longer, heavier forequarters than hindquarters — proportions built for sustained travel on a hunt. Adults run 3 to 5.5 feet long, stand 2.3 to 3 feet at the shoulder, and weigh 90 to 190 pounds, and unusually the females are larger and more muscular than males and outrank them in the clan. The skull anchors massive jaw muscles for a bite that shears hide and fractures the bones of large ungulates, opening them to marrow, while concentrated stomach acid lets the hyena digest bone and other carcass material, later coughing up indigestible hair as compact pellets. The coarse sandy-to-reddish coat is marked with dark, irregular spots that fade with age, so old hyenas can look almost uniformly brown. Despite a dog-like look, hyenas aren't canines — they belong to the cat-line family Hyaenidae, closer to cats, mongooses, and civets, and the spotted hyena is the only living species of its genus.
Spotted hyenas range broadly across sub-Saharan Africa — Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Ethiopia, Uganda — making them among the most widely distributed large African carnivores. They occupy open savanna, grassland, acacia woodland, scrub, semi-desert, and mountains up to about 13,000 feet, generally avoiding dense rainforest and the driest deserts, and where clans forage and hold territory follows the distribution of medium and large ungulates.
Spotted hyenas are active hunters as much as scavengers — in some ecosystems hunting supplies up to 95% of what they eat — and groups can drive cheetahs, leopards, or lionesses off a kill when they hold a numerical edge. Their main prey is medium-to-large ungulates like wildebeest, zebra, gazelle, and antelope, hunted alone or in coordinated packs; taking down a zebra, a group works cooperatively in a relay to exhaust it. They are pursuit predators, hitting 37 mph in bursts and holding 6 mph for miles, and without retractile claws to grip prey they rely on the chase, repeated bites, and group pressure — a pack can consume most of an adult zebra, bones included, in under half an hour.
Spotted hyenas live in fission-fusion clans of up to 80, splitting and regrouping while sharing a hierarchy and territory. Clans are female-dominated: adult females outrank immigrant males, an alpha female sits at the top, and daughters inherit ranks near their mother's (maternal rank inheritance). Most males leave their birth clan at maturity and join another, entering below the resident adults and climbing only as earlier arrivals die or leave. Their vocabulary is rich — the giggling "laugh" signals excitement, stress, or submission (not happiness) during competition at a carcass, while a drawn-out whoop carries for miles to reunite scattered clan-mates, and glandular paste on grass marks boundaries and identity.
Female spotted hyenas have an elongated clitoris (often called a pseudo-penis) through which they urinate, mate, and give birth, and the narrow birth canal makes first births especially risky for mother and cubs. After about 110 days' gestation a female usually bears 1 to 3 cubs, born with open eyes and erupted teeth; littermates may fight over milk, and sibling deaths occur in some litters when food is short. Hyena milk is very rich in fat and protein, letting mothers leave cubs at a communal den while they travel to forage. Spotted hyenas mature at 2 to 3 years and typically live about 12 in the wild, up to 25 in captivity.
The spotted hyena is Least Concern, with an estimated 27,000 to 47,000 individuals — the most numerous large African carnivore — but its trend is decreasing. Outside protected parks it faces real pressure: as people convert habitat to farmland and its wild prey dwindles, the hyena turns to livestock, sparking often-fatal conflict with pastoralists and farmers, and retaliatory poisoning, snaring, and shooting are common. In some regions it is also hunted for body parts used in traditional medicine.
Kingdom
Animalia
Phylum
Chordata
Class
Order
Carnivora
Family
Hyaenidae
Genus
Crocuta
Species
C. crocuta
A spotted hyena's giggling 'laugh' is really a sound that shares excitement or stress, not happiness.
Hyena clans can have up to 80 members and are always led by a top female.
Their jaws are strong enough to crack open large bones that other predators cannot eat.
Spotted hyenas are excellent hunters and catch much of their own food instead of only scavenging.
Cubs are born with their eyes open and already have some teeth.
Hyenas are more closely related to cats and mongooses than to dogs.
Select a question to reveal the answer.
Spotted hyenas live across sub-Saharan Africa in savannas, grasslands, woodlands, and semi-deserts, from Kenya and Tanzania to southern Africa.
Spotted hyenas are carnivores. They hunt animals such as wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle, and they also scavenge meat and bones left behind by other predators.
The 'laugh' is a giggling call hyenas make when they are excited or nervous, often around food. It helps clan members send messages to each other.
No. Even though they look a little like dogs, hyenas belong to their own family, Hyaenidae, and are more closely related to cats and mongooses.
Spotted hyenas are listed as Least Concern, but their numbers are slowly dropping in some areas because of habitat loss and conflict with people.
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