They have been enemies since the Ice Age, and now they still "love and hate each other"

Produced by: Science Popularization China

Author: Lv Zelong (graduate student at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Producer: China Science Expo

Lions and spotted hyenas, the top predators on the African grasslands, are well-known, if not household names. The animated film "The Lion King" and its 3D version, as well as countless documentaries, have portrayed the long-standing rivalry between the two predators.

Recently, based on fossil records and paleogeographic research in the Lake Baikal area of ​​Russia, paleontologists discovered that during the Ice Age, the lion's relatives had fought with the spotted hyena's relatives, which can be said to have accumulated a "feud"!

Reconstruction of a cave lion hunting a reindeer

(Image source: Wikipedia)

In this area, cave lions (Panthera spelaea), a relative of modern lions (Panthera leo), and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), a relative of modern spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), had different spheres of influence. The former mainly occupied the plains, while the latter occupied some caves at not too high an altitude as their sphere of influence.

The fossil sites of cave lions and spotted hyenas in the study, red cave lions and purple spotted hyenas

(Image source: Reference 2)

It should be noted that cave lions and spotted hyenas are very similar to today's lions and spotted hyenas, but not completely the same. Some people believe that cave lions and spotted hyenas belong to the same species as today's lions and spotted hyenas, but they are different subspecies, similar to the Siberian tiger and the South China tiger. However, some people believe that they are two different species with close kinship with today's lions and spotted hyenas, a bit like the relationship between red foxes and Tibetan foxes, cattle and yaks. This article adopts the latter view. The "spotted hyenas" mentioned in the following text refer to all species of the entire genus Hyaenodon.

Enemies meet on a narrow road, spotted hyenas and cave lions gather in Eurasia

Speaking of spotted hyenas and cave lions, in fact, both of them are members of the African continent. Later, some of them spread to the Asian continent during the Ice Age, and some of their relatives are still guarding the African land.

As early as about 3.8 million years ago, when the brain capacity of human ancestors was not large and their faces were similar to those of apes, early spotted hyenas were active on the African continent. At that time, the predecessor of the lion was also on the African grasslands. Its name was the primitive leopard (Panthera principalis).

Reconstruction of a fossil lion

(Image source: wildfact)

About 2 million years ago, some spotted hyenas appeared in Henan Province, China, and this is the Henan spotted hyena (Crocuta honanensis). About 800,000 years ago, the cave spotted hyena (Crocuta spelaea) appeared in Europe. At a similar time, the descendants of the original leopard also emerged and came to Eurasia. This is the fossil lion (Panthera fossilis). They can weigh more than 400 kilograms and become one of the largest cats in history. The descendants of the fossil lion are relatively smaller, but also larger than the Siberian tiger, the cave lion.

Spotted hyena with the woolly rhino corpse behind it

(Image source: Prehistoric-fauna)

In the last few hundred thousand years, spotted hyenas in parts of Europe and Asia and the last spotted hyenas (Crocuta ultima) in eastern Asia have dominated the area. At the same time, many countries in continental Europe, Northeast China and the Korean Peninsula in East Asia, large tracts of land in Russia, and even Alaska in the northwest of the United States are all home to cave lions. In the territory of cave lions, spotted hyenas and cave bears can be seen in the west, and the famous tigers can occasionally be seen in the east. Cave lions on both sides can also see gray wolves and brown bears - these two guys still occupy large areas of Eurasia and North America today.

Some of the cave lion fossil sites in eastern Asia (marked with squares and circles)

(Image source: Reference 4)

The cave bear skull fossil, now based on the reconfirmation of its discovery in Zhoukoudian, Beijing, is likely to be the ancestral species of the cave bear, Ursus deningeri.

(Photo source: taken by the author at the China Geological Museum)

This is a bit off topic, so what kind of competition and conflict do cave lions and spotted hyenas usually have? Although cave lions are large, the size of their groups is much smaller than that of modern lions. They are naturally not able to defeat spotted hyenas that fight in groups. In northern Germany, cave lions were found to be killed by spotted hyenas and dragged into caves that spotted hyenas like. If they encounter the corpse of a cave lion, they will eat some meat and gnaw on the bone marrow of their opponent. There are often bones bitten by them in the caves of spotted hyenas.

Spotted hyena chewing bones

(Image source: Reference 8)

If they come across the carcass of a very large Palaeoloxodon antiquus (which can weigh more than twice as much as today's elephants), both will eat it together, but the parts they eat are somewhat different. The cave lion may enter the abdomen of the carcass to have a full meal, while the spotted hyena will eat the meat and then the bones.

The fossils of the genus Paleocyon found in China are relatives of the same genus as the ancient Paleocyon

(Photo source: taken by the author at Hebei Museum)

To this day, they still "love and hate each other"

Today, spotted hyenas and lions still fight frequently on the African grasslands south of the Sahara. Both are top predators on the grasslands that can hunt giraffes and African buffaloes, so competition is inevitable.

In Namibia’s national parks, more than 70 percent of spotted hyena deaths were linked to lions. In Kenya’s Masai Mara National Park, the number of lions once drastically decreased, but soon the number of spotted hyenas increased—it seems that the conflict between the two is quite intense.

If given the chance, they will kill each other's underage children, or engage in a wave of sovereignty snatching of prey or corpses. Some people once believed that spotted hyenas would not hunt on their own but would occupy the prey killed by lions, but this statement is not entirely correct. After all, both of them will actively hunt and will also snatch each other's prey. However, who can snatch the other's prey varies in different places - in Botswana's national park, spotted hyenas often do this, but in another national park in northern Tanzania, it is lions that often occupy the prey of spotted hyenas.

Lions and spotted hyenas confront each other

(Image source: ar.inspiredpencil website)

Lion attacking young hyena

(Image source: Africa Geographic)

A single spotted hyena is expelled

(Image source: Wikipedia)

Although spotted hyenas do not have an advantage in size and front paws, if they have an overwhelming advantage in numbers, they are likely to snatch the lion's prey, or even injure or kill it. In some areas of East Africa, spotted hyenas have been photographed beating up a single male lion, and records in Chobe National Park show that four spotted hyenas can fight against a female lion, and spotted hyenas are relatively afraid of adult male lions.

If the hyena group is not insufficient or the group is dispersed, the hyena group can at least allow many adult hyenas participating in the attack to escape successfully. Of course, if the hyenas mistakenly enter the lion group, they have to run away. It is worth mentioning that occasionally there are even records of adult male lions finding and killing the queen hyena, but this situation is not very common.

Modern spotted hyena

(Photo source: provided by the author, taken at Tianjin Zoo)

Modern Lion

(Photo credit: courtesy of the author, taken at the Beijing Zoo)

However, the bloody battles between the two are not always so brutal, sometimes they are relatively peaceful. Based on the observation records mentioned in the book "Guarding the Lions", there are groups of spotted hyenas in the Okenye Nature Reserve that choose a different habitat from the lions. They choose to live around the bushes, while the lions choose the White Neck Mountain in the reserve. It seems that staggered living areas are not just the behavior of their "two-hole" relatives in the Ice Age.

Living in the same reserve, they often see each other. However, when they meet, they don't necessarily fight each other - unless they are competing for prey. Sometimes, spotted hyenas take advantage of the fact that "lion teeth are not suitable for breaking bones, but they are", and choose to wait for the lions to finish eating the meat and leave, or eat the remaining meat after they are full, or gnaw the bones and eat the marrow as a meal. In recent years, people have found a single lioness and a single spotted hyena in the Okenye Reserve without any conflict around the prey, as if they had reached a "truce agreement".

When there is no conflict, it is as if a "truce agreement" has been signed

(Image source: Science Photo Library)

Lion attacked by hyenas

(Photo source: animalia-life.club)

Other conservation areas have observed that lions tend to guard relatively large prey when competing with spotted hyenas for prey, while spotted hyenas may take relatively smaller prey for themselves. Other scholars have found that spotted hyenas will choose to hunt at dusk and night in places where there are few lions, but in places where there are many lions, they will increase their activities during the day to avoid encountering lions as their rivals.

The skull of a cave lion is on the left, and the skull of a spotted hyena is on the right. The molars and premolars of the former, and the skull structure make its head unsuitable for gnawing bones, while the skull and teeth of the latter are suitable for crushing bones. Modern lions and spotted hyenas are similar to them.

(Image source: Reference 8)

Are there any lions that don’t encounter spotted hyenas nowadays?

The answer is yes. The lions in the Gir National Park in India are an example. During the Ice Age, another group of modern lions came to the heart of America where spotted hyenas had never been. That is the Panthera atrox in today's continental United States and Canada, as well as some parts of South America. The Panthera atrox was larger than the cave lion, and they encountered the deadly Smilodon fatalis and the dire wolf, which had more numbers and fossils.

Restoration of the Brutal Lion

(Image source: Wikipedia)

The saber-toothed tiger, one of the three main male characters in the "Ice Age" animated series, is actually the deadly smilodon. The deadly smilodon is smaller than the brutal lion, but it can grow to two or three hundred kilograms, and has saber-like fangs and thick limbs. They are also extremely powerful and are considered stars in the paleontological world. As for the dire wolf, their body shape is similar to that of the cave hyena and the modern spotted hyena, and they also have teeth suitable for biting bones. Maybe the dire wolf in the group battle will come to rob while gnawing on the corpses of various large animals. In recent years, based on the study of a mandibular fragment, it was found that there are fossils of dire wolves in Northeast China. This means that the dire wolf may also encounter the cave lion and the last spotted hyena-although based on the study of a large number of fossil sites, it is shown that the dire wolf is still suppressed here and cannot mix like a fish in water in the hinterland of North America.

Dire Wolves and Deadly Smilodon

(Image source: Science Photo Library)

Dire Wolf Restoration

(Image source: prehistoria.fandom website)

Of course, compared to cave lions, brutal lions also have survival concerns, because there are beasts in America that they can hardly defeat alone. These are the giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) and the South American fine-toothed bear (Arctotherium angustidens) in the bear family. The former can weigh nearly one ton, and the latter is one of the largest land carnivores, weighing more than one and a half tons. The weight of these two has already surpassed today's polar bears and brown bears, and they are not vegetarians like cave bears. These big guys with short and thick heads and long legs will hunt larger prey, or rely on their own strength to beat up the enemy.

Reconstruction of the giant short-faced bear

(Image source: Wikipedia)

The brutal lion did not encounter the spotted hyena pack, but also encountered other enemies on the other side of the earth. It can be said that there is no way to have the best of both worlds.

(Note: Latin parts in the text should be italicized)

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