Cave hyena

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Italian. (April 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Italian article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 3,070 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Italian Wikipedia article at [[:it:Crocuta crocuta spelaea]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|it|Crocuta crocuta spelaea}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Cave hyena Temporal range: Middle to Late Pleistocene, 0.5–0.011  Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Crocuta crocuta spelaea skeleton from the Muséum de Toulouse.
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Suborder:	Feliformia
Family:	Hyaenidae
Genus:	Crocuta
Species:	C. crocuta
Subspecies:	†C. c. spelaea
Trinomial name
†Crocuta crocuta spelaea Goldfuss, 1823

The cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea), also known as the Ice Age spotted hyena, is a

The main difference between the spotted hyena and the cave hyena lies in the different length of the bones of the hind and front limbs. In the cave hyena, the humerus and the femur are longer, indicating an adaptation to environments other than those of the spotted hyena. The former was also a heavier and more robust animal: an almost complete specimen, found from the Los Aprendices cave in northern Spain, was estimated to weigh 103 kilograms. As in the spotted hyena, the females were larger than the males. A study of 16 fossil specimens of Pleistocene Crocuta indicated that the cave hyena was subject to Bergmann's rule, becoming larger during glacial periods and smaller during interglacial periods. The same study revealed a progressive increase in carnivorous tooth adaptations during glacial periods, indicating that it was an even more active hunter than today's spotted hyena, a behaviour necessitated by the need to feed on calorie rich fresh meat in a freezing environment. Rock paintings in the Lascaux and Chauvet Caves indicate that the cave hyena had the characteristic patches and mane of the spotted hyena. It has been proposed that it possessed thicker fur than the spotted hyena as an environmental adaptation.

Brain

Intracranial digital casts taken from spotted hyenas and two cave hyena skulls showed that the latter had an encephalic volume of 174–218 cm³, higher than today's spotted hyena which has an average volume of 160 cm³. In cave hyenas, however, the anterior telencephalon occupied only 15.9-16.6% of the total brain volume, in contrast to the spotted hyena, whose anterior telencephalon occupied 24.5%. As previous studies show that there is a correlation between telencephalon development and feeding sociability and flexibility in hyenas, it has been proposed, in light of this finding, that the cave hyena did not demonstrate complex social behaviors or adaptability like the spotted hyena, being instead more similar like brown and striped hyena both known as solitary scavengers.

Diet

The cave hyena's diet differed little from contemporary African spotted hyenas.^[3] The most common prey found in Europe are invariably horses, and in the Srbsko Chlum-Komin Cave alone (in the Czech Republic), horse remains make up 51% of the species present. This predilection for equines distinguishes the cave hyena from today’s spotted hyenas, which are known to target smaller antelope (impala, gazelle, wildebeest) as well as opportunistically scavenge carrion. Steppe bison remains are generally rare in hyena burrows, and it has been proposed that, except during glacial periods, these were avoided to lessen competition with cave lions and wolves. However, certain sites, such as the cave of San Teodoro, where bison make up 50% of the remains, indicate that certain populations of hyenas specialized their hunting where mammoths and bears were scarce, whose carcasses were a main source of food in much of Europe. Cervids are rare or absent in the burrows, probably being too fast for hyenas.^[4][5] However, exceptions to this pattern also exist; the site of Fouvent-Saint-Andoche represents a hyena den containing remains of red deer, Irish elk, and reindeer.^[6]

History of discovery and classification

Although the first full account of the cave hyena was given by

In his own 1812 account, Cuvier mentioned a number of European localities where cave hyena remains were found, and considered it a different species from the spotted hyena on account of its superior size. He elaborated his view in his Ossemens Fossiles (1823), noting how the cave hyena's digital extremities were shorter and thicker than those of the spotted hyena. His views were largely accepted throughout the first half of the 19th century, finding support in de Blainville and Richard Owen among others. Further justifications in separating the two animals included differences in the tubercular portion of the lower carnassial. Boyd Dawkins, writing in 1865, was the first to definitely cast doubt over the separation of the spotted and cave hyena, stating that the aforementioned tooth characteristics were consistent with mere individual variation. Writing again in 1877, he further stated after comparing the two animals' skulls that there are no characters of specific value.^[7]

Analysis of the mitochondrial genomes of Eurasian Crocuta specimens shows no clear separation from African lineages. However, analysis of full nuclear genomes suggests that African and Eurasian Crocuta populations were largely separate, having estimated to have diverged from each other around 2.5 million years ago, closely corresponding to the age of the earliest Crocuta specimens in Eurasia, which are around 2 million years old from China. The nuclear genome results also suggested that the European and Asian populations (the latter often assigned to the separate subspecies C. crocuta ultima) were distinct from each other, but were more closely related to each other overall than to African Crocuta populations. Analysis of the nuclear genome suggests that there had been interbreeding between these populations for some time after the split, which likely explains the discordance between the nuclear and mitochondrial genome results, with the mitochondrial genomes of African and European Crocuta more closely related to each other than to Asian Crocuta, suggesting gene flow between the two groups after the split between the Asian and European populations.^[1]

Relationships with hominids

Interactions

Kills partially processed by

The youngest known specimens of cave hyenas in Europe date to around 31,000 years ago,[12] while the youngest specimens in East Asia date to around 20,000 years ago.^[13] Potential causal factors for extinction include decreasing temperatures, competition with other carnivores, including humans for food and living space, and decreased prey abundance.^[12] Evidence suggests that climate change alone cannot account for the cave hyena's extinction in Europe and that other factors, such as human activity and decreasing prey abundance, are necessary to explain it.^[2]

Gallery

• 
  Cranium from Wookey Hole, now in Taunton Museum
• 
  Skull from Wookey Hole, now in Taunton Museum
• 
  Anterior and posterior views of the right forefoot, from Tor Bryan Caves near Torquay, now kept in British Museum
• 
  Anterior and posterior views of the right hind foot, from Tor Bryan Caves near Torquay, now kept in British Museum.
• 
  Permanent dentition of a Pleistocene cave hyena from Tor Bryan Caves near Torquay, now kept in British Museum.
• 
  Permanent dentition, from Tor Bryan Caves near Torquay (now kept in British Museum), Creswell Caves in Derbyshire (now kept in Manchester's Owen College Museum), Kirkdale Cave and Wookey Hole (now kept in Oxford Museum).
• 
  Jaws and cranium from Kent's Hole, Torquay (now in British Museum) and Wookey Hole (now in Taunton Museum).
• 
  Vertebrae from Wookey Hole (now in Taunton Museum).
• 
  Vertebrae from Wookey Hole (now in Taunton Museum).
• 
  Vertebrae from Wookey Hole (now in Taunton Museum).
• 
  Pelvis from Wookey Hole (now in Taunton Museum).
• 
  Scapula from Creswell Caves, Derbyshire (now in Owens College Museum, Manchester).

See also

• Pachycrocuta

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Crocuta crocuta spelaea.

• (in French) Cuvier, Georges, Note sur les ossemens fossiles d’hyènes, Nouveau Bulletin des Sciences, Tome 1, 1807-1809 (pp. 149–150).