Hyenas creep me out. What if I were to acquire a pup, establish myself as the alpha male, and have the pup neutered at the appropriate age? Would I have myself a hyena that would run to the door when I get home from work? Could I play frisbee with him? Would he tear out a person’s lungs on my command?
Seems to me it would be only slightly different than raising a wolf or a wolfdog. Here’s a few links:
And then if you’re serious…
- Peter Wiggen
Ok, there’s more. Here is a picture of a dude with a pet hyena. Pretty bitching looking, I’ll say that.
I see no problem with this, assuming, of course, that you are a mom or pop hyena and your house is a patch on the African veldt.
Otherwise you’re in trouble. (Needless to say, a hyena is not a wolfdog.)
Apparently it’s possible to some extent but I think cheetahs are more amenable to being tamed.
Faster and more badass too.
I’d be more worried about that baboon on a leash then a hyena. Both would bite the hell out of you, but a hyena can’t grab your arm and rip it out of the socket while biting the hell out of you.
Can you say anthropomorphism?
A hyena is a wild animal. A hyena is still a wild animal even if you raise it up from a pup. Wild animals see you, and every other living creature, as food. You and the hyena may get along fine, but forget to feed it and you are its next meal.
It’ll make good company for your pet wolverine.
Hyenas are not dogs; they just look a bit like them; they are more closely related to Herpestidae (mongoose family) than dogs; they’re even more closely related to cats than dogs.
Not that this necessarily directly relates to their trainability, but I think it should serve as some kind of indication that ordinary dog training methods just aren’t going to be suitable, if they can be trained at all…
Two Jamaicans told me that they own a Hyena/Alsatian cross. I knew it was impossible to have a hyena/dog cross but I didn’t realize that people actually keep hyenas as pets.
[hijack]I had an argument with a creationist about that sort of thing once; I wanted to know what ‘kind’ the hyena was in - he said ‘dog, obviously’ and… well… it all went rather amusingly downhill; he tried to bolster his case by posting a picture of a domestic dog that the owner had happened to name ‘Hyena’.
You can have one, but…
They just laugh at your attempts to train. (Google ad aside… potty training them is just plain silly according to the hyenas)
Nothing worthwhile to add, but man…I just keep imagining whacking a hyena across the nose with a newspaper. And then I imagine the screams and the blood everywhere.
You’d get your ass kicked. Because besides all the other issues of keeping a non-domesticatable carnivore of enormous power around, it just so happens that Spotted Hyenas are matriarchal :). Females are larger, stronger and dominate males.
- Tamerlane
Actually I am against the keeping of exotic pets so the post was more hypothetical. I happened to be watching a doc about them on the National Geographic channel and they just seemed to be the psychopathic gang members of the animal kingdom.