Comments on: Delphos Hyena

By: Harpo

Harpo — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 02:22:17 +0000

Very interesting. A few years ago I posted on the FT website about an experience I had seeing a similiar animal. I’m about 20 minutes west of Fort Wayne. If anyone’s interested, I’ll post the link to that entry.

By: Bob K.

Bob K. — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 23:40:39 +0000

While I’m sure that the “escaped circus animal” explanation has been trotted out as a convenient catch-all, it remains that traveling circuses/fairs have lost and abandoned animals even into more modern times. Having lived in eastern NJ until recently, I was an occasional visitor to the unique “Popcorn Park Zoo”, a unique Zoo that was established in 1977 as a refuge for wildlife, exotic and farm animals that were abused, ill, injured, handicapped, elderly or exploited. It’s located in Forked River, in the northeastern Pine Barrens. About 15-20 years ago, I remember that animals were sheltered at Popcorn Park that had been taken from a small traveling circus which had actually been abandoned by the roadside. Among the animals recovered and housed at the zoo was a hyena!

By: Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 21:46:59 +0000

Tengu, you may wish to research that assumption a bit. It’s the other way around. Giant pandas were hunted, giant pandas were killed, giant pandas were caught alive, and then the Panda bear toys were created. Quite similar in evolution to the origins of that of the “Teddy bears.”

By: Tengu

Tengu — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 21:29:49 +0000

Were giant pandas ever hunted? I thought they were pretty much ignored untill the toy manufacturers found them

By: bill green

bill green — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:42:03 +0000

hey loren & everyone great new article about a delphos hyena. very interesting indeed.. thanks bill green

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:34:20 +0000

I would venture to say that for every Georg Steller there were thousands upon thousands of fulltime and occasional professional commecial hunters with the sole intent of taking all that nature’s bounty provided in seemingly endless amounts so they could buy the manufactured goods (including more guns and ammo) that preceded the appearance of anyone with even a relatively informed naturalists appreciation for what they were seeing. The panda is noteworthy as an example of how even the relentless commercial hunters would sometimes find the effort to get the very last ones just too much bother.
Think of the list of the ones that became extinct that we know of, and realize that those extinct populations we know about represent only a small percentage of the species that we’ll never really know anything about. This become increasingly apparent when we apply the modern criteria for species. For example, would the millions of eastern bison that were harvested (now extinct without so much as an untanned hide in existence) up until they became extinct in first half of the 19th century nowadays be considered a seperate population and therefor considered a species by modern taxonomists? Probably.

By: sschaper

sschaper — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 16:48:09 +0000

Some of the early explorers were men of science, as it was practiced then. The monks with the Spaniards, Audubon, the Lewis and Clarke expedition, etc. In particular, the American and Canadian explorers of the early 19th century had strong scientific interests, though natural philosophy was still largely a gentleman’s hobby. I’m sure that many here recall Jefferson’s interest in the mastodon.

I would tend to think that large animals that were in abundance, would not have been missed. Even some that were not in abundance (Stellar’s Sea Eagle, Stellar’s Sea Cow (Stellar’s Jay is of course, still very common).

But even a large animal, if in a niche, and close to extinction, much in the manner of the giant panda, such might escape notice and cataloging, known only in a few tales.

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 14:38:00 +0000

Ah, one of those peculiarities of history. If only the very first people into North America were biologists instead of illiterate, pre-scientific hunters, we might have seen that remnants of the pleistocene inventory of mega-fauna existing in regugias and lingering in niches that somehow managed hang on. For all of nature’s efficiency, it rarely wipes everyting out entirely at one fell swoop. It takes a human’s short-sighted mentality to purposefully do that.
As for old world animals which originated here in North America; the cheetah, the horse, and the llama/camelids come to mind.
Along that line, I have read some early accounts of horsemen crossing the great plains encountering a race of “wolves” that the early writers described as relatively slow and big which seemed to have been adapted to hunting bison and consequently were easy to ride up next to and dispatch with a blow to the head while running along side the animals.
I wonder if North America were to be examined with the kind of human eye that Europe has over the last few hundred years if we too wouldn’t find the less consopicous fossils that might illuminate the not too distant past as the holocene superceded the pleistocene.

By: shumway10973

shumway10973 — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 13:58:43 +0000

ok, so what if North America has or had our own version of a hyena? We have had other critters with close African cousins–in the distant past, though.

By: deejay

deejay — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 12:39:18 +0000

Nothing says “good family fun” like watching the Hyenas perform at the circus. Seriously, some of those circus excuses are lame. Cool story, thanks for posting.