The Evolution of Hyenas

high up in the Arctic Circle a predator clings on for survival against persistent snow and blizzards and Ice Age Canada a hyena the discovery of a fossil has revealed these beasts roam 2500 miles north of any where they had been previously known from Africa is like an enclave of Ice Age ecology being a refuge for giant mammals and also large carnivores have died out in other areas hyenas are the most successful carnival that lived there currently and it is difficult to imagine them without a savanna backdrop but they are actually very well known from the northern hemisphere in prehistoric times and now it is known that hyenas existed at the top of the world hunting and scavenging on caribou and maybe even mammoths despite looking and acting like canis hyenas are actually more closely related to felines than they are to dogs specifically they are from a group of animals called feeder forms that contain felines and the animals that are more closely related to felines than canids cats would eventually split from this group leaving the non fitted Fila forms that are known as vivir idea which contain animals like Mongoose meerkats fuzes and hyenas this group is named after the family viverridae as they are the oldest and most primitive family in the group and where the other animals would have evolved from liver reads include animals like binturong Janette's as well as the African civet the bad resemblance the primitive hyenas during the Eocene most carnivore ends with tree climbers but would eventually start to come down from the trees which is what happened with hyenas the earliest hyena known was called protect aetherium and unlike its descendants had retractable claws and probably spent a lot of time in the trees it most likely lived a lot like the members of the vivir a day family due today early hyena started to evolve a more ground willing lifestyle developing longer legs larger bodies or losing their retractable claws around 20 million years ago and became very successful about 15 million years ago the first successful hyenas were more doglike than the current species they had lighter builds and possessed very canid looking's goals one species called icht etherium for Verret nests had a skeleton very similar to that of a jackal these hyenas would have filled niches very similar to the ones that are filled by cane is today it was around ten million years ago when hyenas would develop their most famous trick of bone-crushing to get at the nutrient-rich marrow scientifically known as Ostia feglia they adapted a strong bite force with modern-day spotted hyenas having the same bite force as a lion to smite being less than half the size and in addition to this they had strong stomach acids that help digest scavenge carcasses one of the first of these specialized bone crushing hyenas was called AD cúcuta which diverged for the more doglike hyenas and very quickly started to see a lot of success there was in fact another group of very high Nina like animals known as purse recruited a that were already fulfilling this niche which the hyenas quickly dominated the transition that hyenas took mirrored that of canis that were evolving in North America around the same time if not a bit earlier they evolved from tree dwellers and the earliest members like Hesperus ayam had retractable claws that they would later lose and one of the subfamilies in the cainy group known as borer Fagan a had many species that had similar adaptations to eat bones - hyenas during the Miocene canis were both evolving to occupy the dog niches on their respected continents however this changed when the Bering Strait opened up connecting North America and Asia cane is flooded into Eurasia very quickly out competed the dog like hyenas occupying their niches but they weren't able to compete with the bone crushing hyenas the only doglike hyena that survived the onslaught is the are dwarf that can be traced back to the doglike lineage and are not closely related to other hyenas very unusually for doglike animals they are insectivorous surviving mainly from licking up termites outside their mouths this specialty lifestyle is most likely what allowed them to survive and kept them out of direct competition with the canids the bone crushing hyenas reached their peak in the Pliocene about three million years ago where their range stretched far further than today in 1821 remains of many different animals including an elephant and a hippo were found in the cave in the north of England among these animals were several hyenas that may have brought the other animal remains into the cave to feed on them these hyena fossil sites can be found in many places throughout Europe and are in fact one of the most common Ice Age carnivores they are known as cave hyenas and are a factor European subspecies of the spotted hyena only lives in Africa today they probably look quite similar if not for slight differences in leg length however cave hyenas were far larger perhaps weighing a third more than the currently living spotted hyenas these cave hyenas will not the largest hyena though as that title would go to crow cooter more commonly referred to as the giant short-faced hyena that could grow up to a meter at the shoulder approaching the same size as a lioness they are thought to have been very social like modern-day hyenas and possessed a klepto parasitic lifestyle surviving by stealing the prey of other carnivores similar to the striped hyena today included in their choice of prey may have been archaic humans as their as a fossil that belongs to Homo erectus that has wounds thoughts have been caused by a giant hyena this scavenging lifestyle was probably forced upon them due to their very large size making them ill suited for hunting down prey over long distances this is in stark contrast to modern-day spotted hyenas that can run some of the longest distances out of any animal and despite the commonly held belief obtained most of their prey via hunting it is thought that competition was spotted hyena or cave hyenas is what drove the giant hyenas to extinction as they died out soon after their appearance on the continent about half a million years ago ancient hyenas ranged across Eurasia and Africa but also into North America being found as far south as Mexico bout of the some 70 species of prehistoric hain is now known only one made it to America shafts map wealthy T's also known as a running hyena this was the hyena that was found in the Arctic making it clear the hyenas got to North America from crossing the Bering Strait like many other animals these creatures were found so far north and the climate may have been even harsher back then that is sensible to assume they may have made several adaptations to this lifestyle they probably had thicker fur and may have adapted a white coat like many part of animals shafts Mapple feces died out about 700,000 years ago and nearly all non African species of hyena disappeared at the end of the last glacial period about eleven thousand years ago the climate would have become wetter due to there being less water locked up in glaciers turning some grassland into forests and changing the preferred habitat the hyena which probably led to their demise so not only did hyenas inhabit far colder regions than we would associate with them but the warming of the climate may have been what led to their thing ssin a massive thank you goes to David Vonda roast özil Worth and Karim and all my other patrons for their support if you would like to support me as well then you can go to WWE and calm /mo flight media and make a pledge if you enjoy the video and would like to be notified of future content then consider subscribing thank you for watching

Channel: Moth Light Media

Views: 136,467

Rating: 4.9615259 out of 5

Keywords: Arctic Hyenas, european hyenas, Hyenas, Giant Hyenas, Evolution of Hyenas, Cave Hyenas, Aardwolf, insect eating canids, Modern Hyenas, Bone cruching Hyenas

Id: 0_VVa-FdbKg

Length: 7min 16sec (436 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/donnythehyena22mya]

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[u/javier_aeoa]

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