East Bay Hills Home To World's Only Captive Hyena Colony
BERKELEY (CBS 5) -- The Bay Area is known for its eclectic mix of residents. But this particular group might take the prize as the most unusual.
If you hike in the East Bay hills you may have heard some strange sounds. They are coming from a hidden compound, closed to the public, home to the only colony of captive hyenas in the world.
UC Berkeley Neuroscience Professor Frederic Theunissen is one of the many researchers who work at the compound. He is studying hyena calls.
"We can we look at an animal that has a really sophisticated communication system and try to see similarities between the way they communicate and the way humans communicate," he said.
Theunissen gave CBS 5 translations of a few of their calls, such as the "tonal groan."
"It's kind of a friendly kind of appeasing sound, a little bit like wummm wummm," he said.
There is also the "distance call" to find lost friends. "That sound goes woooop," he said. And of course, the famous giggle. "That's when they get a little too excited," he said.
Theunissen is compiling a database of the sounds.
But that's just the latest research going on at the hyena colony. The animals' unique traits have attracted all kinds of scientists. Even the United States Army has funded a study on the hyena immune system. Believe it or not, they are resistant to anthrax.
What could be most intriguing about hyenas is their sexuality. Females dominate, and look just like males.
"People thought they were hermaphrodites," said Steve Glickman, a UC Berkeley psychology professor who founded the colony 27 years ago.
"The idea was to answer the question what makes males, males and females, females," Glickman said. He has watched three generations of hyenas reproduce.
Glickman's work has led to medicals studies in endocrinology, fertility and even prostate cancer. He showed CBS 5 videos of females giving birth through what looks like a penis, to some of the most aggressive newborns on the planet.
"The babies are fighting. Their eyes are open, their teeth are fully erupted," Glickman said, pointing to the barely born cubs attacking each other.
The aggression and the masculinity have a lot to do with hormones. "It turns out that their ovaries are making a great deal of Androstenedione, which is the androgen that Mark McGwire was taking the year he set the Major League home run record," he said.
Glickman said just because they're so aggressive, doesn't mean hyenas aren't lovable. "They are highly intelligent animals. All of us who have worked with hyenas up close and personal have come to really appreciate them and their unique characteristics," he said.
Among their biggest fans is researcher Mary Weldele, who manages the colony. "When I first saw them they were just so enchanting," she said.
Weldele has names for all of them and knows their personalities. She said some of the hyenas are very loving and calm, others are real pranksters. "We have certain animals that are going to rip open something, dig holes," she said.
She said all of the hyenas love to socialize and play, especially if there's water around. It's that personality that attracted research of another kind: Walt Disney animators spent days at the colony to get inspiration for the hyenas in the Lion King.
Glickman was concerned about creating the wrong stereotype for kids. But he says the animators were very understanding.
"The script was already written so they were not going to be able to turn them into benign creatures. But they would try to make them funny instead of merely evil," he said.
These days though Glickman has a hard time laughing. "It costs money to maintain the hyenas. At the moment it's about $13 per day per hyena," he said.
If grants don't come through by the end of the year, after almost three decades the colony will have to close. It's a day everybody here dreads.
"It's the only place like this in the world and it probably will never happen again. And there's a lot yet to learn," said Weldele. "It's really a unique animal and it will be painful to watch its study come to a halt," said Glickman.
Zoos across the country have already been contacted and will take the hyenas in if the colony closes. But everyone agrees the chances of there ever being another captive hyena colony are slim to none.
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