At the beginning of July, Caribbean Gardens, the zoo in Naples, welcomed two new carnivores from Buffalo Zoological Gardens into the growing zoo family in Naples. Caribbean Gardens is one of less than two dozen zoos in America to house these spotted predators. And now that they've arrived, we'd like to clear up a few myths about these much-maligned creatures. In fact, just about everything we know about hyenas is mostly wrong.
Hyenas are scavengers.
Yes, but only if your definition of scavenger includes lions, too. In certain areas, lions steal more kills from hyenas than vice versa. Hyenas are Africa's second largest predator capable of killing prey three times their own weight. The rest they get the hard way. To start off with, whatever you call it, it's not a happy sound.