Masai Mara Hyena Research - Beauty & The Beasts

A small tented camp guarded by six-foot tall, red-robed Masai warriors, is not the type of place you expect to find a beautiful Californian woman with crystal blue eyes, luxurious long blonde hair and a handshake like a vice. One of Santa Barbara's more intrepid residents had been working in unusual places for many years, but had never been quite this far before. Deep in the heart of the Masai Mara bush, she allowed me a glimpse at her unique lifestyle and recounted some of her bizarre every-day experiences.

Paula White is a professional biologist with a BSc in Biology from University of California Santa Barbara, a Masters Degree in Wildlife Management from University of California, Berkeley and a PhD in something similar. She travelled ten thousand miles to the East African wildlife haven of Kenya in order to add her considerable research experience to a sixteen year study of Masai Mara Spotted Hyenas.

This was originally started by Lawrence Frank of UC, Berkeley, in 1978. The somewhat solitary lifestyle of field researchers is more than made up for by the simple pleasure of living at such close proximity to nature. Unlike many of the Masai Mara game reserve tourist lodges, there is no protective fence around this camp and hippos, lions, elephants and buffalo are at liberty to wander as they please. Nonchalant big-bottomed Baboons descend surreptitiously from the safety of the tress to wander through the quiet camp loooking for an opportunity to raid the food store.

Knob Hill And Lone Tree

No tourist ever came to this camp. There were just four tents: two used as sleeping quarters, a kitchen tent and a storeroom. A pale grey canopy is strung between the broad boughs of a sprawling Fig tree to provide shelter for a dining area. At 6am every morning and 5pm every evening, Paula and her colleagues head off in an old green land-cruiser, in search of members of the eighty strong clan of hyenas, who have been studied here for many hyena generations.

Their territory spreads across rolling grass hills and valleys, bordered by muddy creeks and patches of dense bush where landmarks such as the 'lone tree' - a solitary prickly Acacia, help them find their way back to camp. Unfortunately this did not work quite so well for me and I got hopelessly lost when everywhere I looked I saw a 'lone tree' just like the one I wanted. I discovered 'knob hill' was a more distinguishable landmark to save me from wandering aimlessly around the plains of the Masai Mara.

Testosterone Overdose

Paula took me to see 'Jabba' - the newest mother in the clan. Her den was a customized abandoned Aardvark burrow, in which she had given birth to her twin cubs. Round teddy-bear ears peeped above the leafy bush as two almost cute jet-black week old cubs came out to play. I had previously despised the hyena for its scavenging aggresive nature and ugly sloping appearance but quickly changed my mind when I witnessed scenes of great maternal tenderness and a complex social structure.

Scientists have found that their aggressiveness is due to the presence of abnormal amounts of hormones, particularly testosterone, in both males and females. The cubs are literally bathed in this male hormone in the mothers womb and emerge with a strong fighting spirit.

Painstaking research has resulted in identification of specific hormones responsible for this highly aggressive behaviour and tests are being carried out to analyse whether the same hormones may play a significant role in uncontrollable human aggressive behaviour.

The nursing dens can be long and deep and a camera probe mounted on what appeared to be a child's remote-controlled battery operated car, is sent down the hole to observe the cubs behaviour. One occasion when it got well and truly stuck, Paula - being the smallest of the research team, had to go in head-first to recover it. She knew the aggressive cubs were safely on the other side of the wedged probe, so she crawled reluctantly into the dark narrow passageway. Her reluctance was not at the potential danger, but because she had just had the luxury of a long hot shower at one of the lodges and was for once feeling fresh and clean.

The full length of her body dissapeared into the tunnel until only her feet were visible from the entrance. Finally it was within reach and she grabbed the probe shouting 'Pull!' through a mouth full of dirt. Three feet under and six feet in, she hoped, with repressed panic, that her colleagues would hear her. They did, and dragged her out triumphantly clutching the precious probe and covered from head to toe in clinging red dirt.