After more than 35 years of surveillance, MSU researchers are exposing some of the secret workings of mobs.
To be clear, these mobs are made up of spotted hyenas.
Publishing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the MSU team revealed that relationships and social interactions between hyenas can influence when two or more animals decide to work together to attack lions. This type of cooperative behavior is called mobbing.
“Hyenas are sensitive to social relationships,” said Kay Holekamp, a University Distinguished Professor of Integrative Biology in MSU’s College of Natural Science. “They base their decisions about whether or not to cooperate in mobbing lions on both immediate-term friendly behaviors and long-term, friendship-like relationships.”
The team at the Maasai Mara National Reserve in southwestern Kenya observed about 1,000 mobbing interactions across several generations of hyenas over the past three decades. Holekamp’s team is still working to find what other secrets those data sets hold.