Urban Hyenas

Ethiopia is somewhat unique among African countries because the people there believe that hyenas consume bad spirits. Because of this belief hyenas are less persecuted than they are in places like Kenya and has facilitated the rise of the “urban hyena”. Almost all large cities in Ethiopia support large populations of hyenas that scavenge from rubbish dumps and domestic animals.

Harar, Ethiopia is the most well known city for seeing these urban hyenas because of the “hyena men” who feed the hyenas nightly as a show for tourists.