(The Walt Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic Partners.) The all-new movie, The Lion King, which Disney releases July 19, again portrays a trio of spotted hyenas as evil sidekicks of the villain Scar. With such an unsavory history, it’s no surprise pop culture depictions of hyenas have followed suit.

Pliny the Elder, an ancient Roman author, wrote that hyenas can magically freeze other animals in place. That’s because centuries of literature and traditional folklore-often featuring stories of witchcraft, grave-digging, and sexual deviance-have cemented a “deep-rooted disgust for the hyena in the human psyche,” he says.Īristotle described the hyena as “exceedingly fond of putrefied flesh.” Hemingway labeled the animal a “hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead.” And Roosevelt called it a “singular mixture of abject cowardice and the utmost ferocity,” according to a 1995 study on the hyena’s status throughout history. “The visceral reaction any time I tell someone I’m working with hyenas is, Ew gross, why?” student at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, who studies spotted hyenas in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater.

Long misunderstood as dim-witted, gluttonous scavengers with a demonic laugh, the hyena has a “serious PR crisis on its paws,” says Arjun Dheer, a Ph.D. The king of the jungle, you might say? Nope. Cubs of the alpha female inherit the rank immediately below hers, similar to a monarchy. The most successful hunter in all of Africa is intelligent and loving, forming intricate social bonds that rival those of primates.

Jungle scavengers