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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan: The Laughing Hyena : The Sunday Statesman : 17 July 2016
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THE LAUGHING HYENA


" SOME days ago I was asked to arbitrate on a rather noisy point. Three of us was discussing a mutual acquaintance, given to loud, discordant, ill-timed laughter, who had just snubbed us all rudely and one of my friends remarked that the man was unquestionably a hyena, as was proved by his having the very laugh of the beast. At this, my other friend, a lawyer, raised a technical objection on the ground that the laugh of a hyena was a myth. It was this point that was referred to me and, with my usual tact, I satisfied both sides by pointing out that if a faunal epithet was needed for our mutual acquaintance, then surely it would be more appropriate to call him a laughing jackass.

But in point of fact, the HYENA does laugh. Only its laugh is not, like the laugh of that man, a sustained cackle of triumphant derision, but the nature of a friendly overture. I have a photograph (reproduced here) of a Hyena actually laughing, while coming up to be petted by a man it was fond of -- taken that young, hyenas develop a deep attachment their human friends.

The Hyena's laugh is a weird, excited, staccato cacophony, sinister in its general effect in spite of its peaceful import. No other animal is capable of the same vocal expression or anything like it. but sometimes, when I try to get Australia on my radio, that result is strikingly similar. No doubt that the hyena's laugh has a social significance, and is probably used to convey a placatory or friendly approach both in intra and extra-specific relationships, but this is not the call used by a pair of Hyenas keeping in touch with each other. That is a sensibly and economically brief call, much less loud, and since it does not appear to have been mentioned by anyone else so far, I may describe it fully here.

For years, when I was living in Deccan, I had heard a peculiar nocturnal sound, half-yelp, half-mew, repeated at intervals. It did not sound like a bird's call, and enquiry of the Boyas and other hunters of the area brought no enlightenment. A trapper assured me that it was the call of the dinky little Indian Fox, and I assured him even more emphatically that it was not, for this charming creature was not to be found within the valley (though it was almost common, immediately outside it) and, moreover, the call of a fox, as I knew well, was a high, chattering, long-drawn cry. The one night, accompanied by a Boya youth and armed with a five-cell torch, I set out to investigate the call, which we could hear just beyond the road.

IT was 11 o'clock and visibility was excellent, for there was a brilliant moon. We crossed the road and entered the harvested groundnut fields and scrub beyond, but stopped almost at once and crouched behind a bush when we realised that there were two calling animals, and that one of them was coming our way. The ground in front of us was bare and sloped gently upwards, and then dipped sharply down, and suddenly a Hyena appeared on the rise, and trotted towards us.

A Hyena by moonlight is unforgettably beautiful sight. The warm greys and streaky blacks of its long coat, the high ridge of silky hair along the neck and back, and the short, full brush take on a silvery ethereality in that light, and there is no substance at all to the animal -- it is a moving aerial shadow, its fluffy hair and the peculiar give of the hocks in movement (which is quite pronounced) endowing it with a phantom-like, slinking grace. The Boya lad with me was as much moved by the sight as I was, and clutched me tight in his excitement.

The silvery, insubstantial shadow halted, lifted and turned its head, and came out with its short, mewling yelp, a call that was not loud, heard from a mere 20 yards away, but which carried far through the night. From across the nullah to our left, almost a mile away, came an answering call, thin and sharply audible. I heard and saw that Hyena call once more before a nocturnal lorry, rumbling along the road behind us, sent it packing, and since anyhow it was going away, I flashed my torch on its retreating figure and saw every hair distinctly in the powerful beam before it disappeared into the dip.

I may add that I noticed a difference in attitude between a Hyena laughing and one giving voice to its communication call. The animal lays its long, pricked ears back, stretches its head out in a line with the body and shakes itself from side to side in a cringing, fawning gesture when it LAUGHS, but when CALLING to its mate the head and ears are held alertly erect, and it stands still, listening for the response."

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 30 December 1962 in The Sunday Statesman

# The photograph of a Hyena laughing has not been reproduced here.