GPS Collars Show It's Lions, Not Hyenas, Who Chase the Other Down

New research using GPS collars to track individual lions and spotted hyenas has overturned a long-held assumption about how the two competing carnivores interact. Rather than hyenas following lions around for scraps, the data show that when the two species cross paths, it is lions — especially males — who move toward hyenas, while hyenas consistently move away.

"During my master's, I lived in the bush while studying brown hyenas," said Dr. Nancy Barker of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, lead author of the study in Frontiers in Ethology. "I repeatedly observed lions actively tracking hyenas. When I shared my observations with other leading researchers, I was often told that I had the relationship backward, and that what I had seen was simply a series of chance encounters." Barker said the hyenas' retreat signal was consistent across three independent statistical tests, suggesting it reflects a repeatable behavioural pattern rather than chance.

Barker collared 17 lions and 14 spotted hyenas over four years at Etosha National Park in Namibia and Chobe National Park and the adjoining Linyanti Conservancy in Botswana, choosing higher-ranking individuals within each pride or clan who were least likely to disperse from their territory. GPS fixes taken every five minutes during the animals' peak activity hours yielded 23 pairs of simultaneously tracked animals, including 10 lion-hyena pairs, letting the researchers classify whether each animal was moving toward the other, away from it, or to the side during thousands of simultaneous locations.

The data also suggested that male lions actively track hyenas, while females reacted differently depending on which other pride members were present, though Barker cautioned that more data are needed to strengthen that particular finding, since the number of collared individuals was relatively small and only moments when both a lion and a hyena had a simultaneous GPS fix could be used.