What is for you a "REAL" dog ? Wants to hear opinions from those who talk about Inges!! - Page 10

Wild Hyenas

I had long thought that the wild Nigerian hyenas as posted on various websites over the years were trained animals used for the collection of debts, but a new story today via Boing Boing claims the animals are used in a traveling circus.

 

Abdullahi Amadu was 15 years old when he joined his father's business in a little town called Mullumpashi in Katsina State, Nigeria. Following in his father's footsteps meant that he needed his own hyena. After all, that's how his family made a living: they worked as entertainers - accompanied by hyenas, snakes and monkeys - and sold the fetishes and herbal medicines that are popular in Nigeria.

Abdullahi leant how to go to the caves and bushes of Bauchi, Yola, Plateau and Taraba States in central and northern Nigeria. At the entrance to the dark tunnels leading to the caves where a hyena lived, Abdullahi and his partners would blow in a whiff of traditional African tranquilizer, a powdery substance which intoxicates the animal and renders it senseless.

Next, they'd use a powerful torch to find their way through the tunnel and then drag the dazed animal from its hideout. Sometimes, the powerful light from the hyena's eyes would damage the bulb of the torch, but Abdullahi would still have his way.

"To be successful when hunting for hyenas and other dangerous animals," Abdullahi, 32, says, "we arm ourselves with various types of fetish charms, amulets and the tranquilizer. We also use hunting dogs to sniff out the hyenas' hideouts."

Abdullahi is one of a group of 10 entertainers who crisscross Nigeria with three hyenas, two rock pythons and four monkeys. In February 2005, they were staying in a ramshackle three-bedroomed apartment in Dei Dei Junction, a suburb of Abuja, the Nigerian capital. The animals were housed in specially constructed boxes.

Every member of the party had sores and scars on their faces, legs and hands - legacies of times when the animals suddenly turned hostile and pounced on their handlers with their teeth, fingers and claws.

"We use a heavy stick to hit the hyenas on the head when they misbehave," Abdullahi says. "We knock them down on the ground. All of us hold the sticks in case the animals become aggressive."

But one member of the group of animal handlers is six-year-old 'Mummy' Abdullahi, Abdullahi's daughter, and she plays with the various animals without showing any signs of fear. She even rides a hyena as if it were a miniature, slope-shouldered pony.

"She cannot be harmed," Abdullahi says. "It's the same thing with the snakes and monkeys. She has partaken of a potion of traditional herbs and has been bathed with it. So her safety from the animals is guaranteed for the rest of her life."

Most handlers of hyenas (and other animals such as goats and cows) make use of magic, voodoo herbs, juju concoctions, powders, amulets and esoteric incantations to train their captives - as well as build up their own confidence. The animal handlers also believe that human beings are capable of transforming themselves into animals such as hyenas, hence the need for powerful voodoo charms and incantations to protect themselves from harm. And then sometimes, especially when they haven't been fed on time, the hyenas turn aggressive and the charms and amulets are used as back-ups to the heavy sticks.