The spotted hyena and
the striped hyena live side by side on the African savanna.
The striped hyena roams a very large, patchy range stretching from northern Africa through the Middle East to India.
Of them,
the striped hyena and the brown hyena are most at risk.
Vladimir Dinets examined the unlikely friendship between
striped hyenas (Hyaena hyaena) and grey wolves (Canis lupus) in the southern Negev, Israel.
So Dinets and Eligulashvili were surprised when they observed
striped hyenas — the little known, mostly solitary relatives of the better - known spotted hyenas of Africa — in the middle of grey wolf packs, moving together through a maze of canyons in the southern part of the Negev desert.
As a result, the remaining eight large mammal species in Egypt — including
striped hyenas, golden jackals, and the Egyptian fox — are now more vulnerable than they've been in more than 12,000 years, Yeakel says.
Not exact matches
It's not yet clear whether symbiotic microbes led to the split between
striped and spotted
hyenas, but Theis said scientists now better understand the broad influence that microbes can have.