Why Don't Lions Eat Hyenas Despite Being Deadly Enemies? A Painful Experience
Author: Lesheng
When we think of Africa's Serengeti, we're immediately drawn to the animals there – specifically, lions. As top predators in the cat family, lions are often called the 'King of the Serengeti'. In the areas where lions live, very few animals will challenge a lion's authority. Even leopards, when they encounter lions, can only be hunted by them. However, there are always exceptions. On the African Serengeti, there are two animals that lions don't eat. The first is the elephant, and the second is the hyena.
Lions don't eat hyenas, we can understand this as hyenas are difficult to hunt, and the meat is hard to eat, so lions would rather hunt other grazing animals instead of challenging hyenas, because if an elephant kicks with its elephant legs, it won't die or be injured. But why don't lions eat hyenas?
As we know, lions and hyenas are deadly enemies on the African Serengeti. We often see them in 'Animal World' programs fighting over each other's food. But over time, these two animals have formed a deadly relationship. According to animal researchers, lions and hyenas not only compete for each other's food but also try to hunt each other.
For example, a spotted hyena pack will attack lone female lions and lion cubs, then eat them, and lion prides are not easy to bully, they will also retaliate against lone hyenas. Even if hyenas summon their companions, once the number of hyenas is not more than the lion pride, the lion pride will still attack and drive the hyena pack away. However, in general, lion prides choose to directly hunt the leader of the hyena pack, which is often called the 'Hyena Queen'.
As long as the 'Hyena Queen' is killed, the hyena pack will easily fall into chaos, so the main target of lion prides is usually the 'Hyena Queen'.
Surprisingly, even when lions kill the 'Hyena Queen', they don't eat them, but instead carry the hyena's carcass in their mouths for a while, touring the other hyenas to intimidate them so that they will retreat. But after that, they will discard the carcass of the hyena and hunt for other food.
As for this practice, many people find it puzzling, because why shouldn't lions accept this free food?
In the face of this situation, some netizens expressed their opinions, believing that lions don't eat hyenas because the taste of hyena meat is simply too bad compared to the meat of grazing animals, so lions would rather put in a little effort to hunt other animals instead of eating hyenas.
But this may not be the real reason. After analysis, the reasons why lions don't eat hyenas are as follows.
The first reason is that lions may not be hungry yet. As far as wild lions are concerned, after a big meal, they can maintain food for several days to a half month, so if there are hyenas that lions kill, they may not eat them. Of course, there is a special case, that is, if lions have been hungry for several days, then lions may not care what kind of meat it is. Therefore, lions don't eat hyenas, which only means that this lion is not very hungry.
The second reason is that hyenas contain a large number of parasites. According to the information, hyenas have a habit of eating carrion, although they will also hunt, this doesn't change the fact that they used to eat carrion. Perhaps from the eyes of lions, hyena meat is not only not tasty, but also contains many parasites, which can easily cause illness, so they would rather hunt animals with fewer parasites than eat hyena meat.
Of course, lions don't have the same discernment as humans, but this doesn't rule out that lions' ancestors may have hunted hyenas in the past and then died from illness, and these painful experiences may have become an instinct of lions through thousands of years of evolution.
The last reason is that hyena meat is really not delicious. Looking at hyena's eating habits, they start with the anus and large intestine of the prey, so hyenas may also carry a bad smell on their bodies. In addition, hyenas are not obese, most of their bodies are bones, so such prey is not attractive to lions. Therefore, even if lions want to fill their stomachs, they will choose to eat grazing animals instead of hyenas.
