A spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) has been found in southeastern Egypt, the first recorded sighting of the creature in the region for thousands of years.
The single individual was captured and killed by humans about 30 km from the border with Sudan.
“My first reaction was disbelief until I checked the photos and videos of the remains,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Abdullah Nagy of Al-Azhar University, Egypt. “When I saw the evidence, I was completely surprised. It was beyond anything we expected to find in Egypt.”
The sighting occurred about 500 km north of the spotted hyena’s known range, in neighboring Sudan. The researchers theorized that a regional, decade-long weather cycle, part of the Active Red Sea Valley phenomenon, could have resulted in increased rainfall and vegetation growth, opening a migration corridor for the hyena where better grazing opportunities supported sufficient prey.
To test this idea, they used a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), a measure of rainfall and the corresponding grazing opportunities, with NDVI values taken from Landsat 5 and 7 satellite images between 1984 and 2022.
The analysis revealed multi-year droughts with shorter, relatively wet periods. The last five years had higher NDVI values than the previous two decades, suggesting that plant growth could support the prey of a curious spotted hyena.
“The fact that the environmental zone of the corridor has become less harsh, offering easier passage along the ‘highway,’ could explain how the hyena reached the far north,” Nagy says. “However, the motivation for its extensive journey to Egypt is still a mystery, requiring further research.”
Spotted hyenas are successful predators, commonly found in a variety of habitats in sub-Saharan Africa. They can travel up to 27 km per day, outpacing semi-nomadic, human-managed livestock migrations and resisting occasional killing.
The spotted hyena, according to the study, hunted two goats herded by humans in Wadi Yahmib in the Elbe Protected Area and was then tracked, spotted, chased and killed in late February 2024. The kill was photographed and located, giving animal ecologists the opportunity to follow it closely.
The study’s findings force a rethink of the agreed-upon distribution of spotted hyenas and add to the available data on how regional climate change may affect animal migration.
