The
original version of the Charles Hamilton Smith/William Home Lizars illustration
of the Nubian naked hyaena that appeared as Plate 27 in
Volume II of The Natural History of Dogs...Including Also the Genera Hyaena
and Proteles, published in 1840 (public domain)
Four species of modern-day
hyaena are presently recognised by science – the spotted hyaena Crocuta
crocuta, the striped hyaena Hyaena hyaena, the brown hyaena Hyaena
brunnea, and the aardwolf Proteles cristatus – all four of which
possess a respectable (and sometimes notably shaggy) pelage. This is why a very
unexpected discovery of mine has left me decidedly perplexed.
Serendipity has
played a significant part in several of my cryptozoological finds, and this one
is no exception. While perusing the internet in search of some 19th-Century
engravings depicting a totally different type of animal, I happened upon the
truly remarkable engraving opening this present ShukerNature blog article. As
can be seen, the animal in question is labelled in it as a "naked hyaena
of the desert Africa", and apart from sporting a dorsal
mane, a tail tuft, some cheek fur, and some short hair running under its chin
and along its throat, it does indeed appear to be naked. Yet as far as I am
aware, no animal matching its bizarre appearance is known today.
Eager to learn
more about this bald enigma, I scoured the internet in search of the
engraving's original, published source, and was pleased to uncover it quite
readily. The artwork for the engraving had been prepared by a 19th-Century
naturalist and artist called Charles Hamilton Smith, which was then engraved by
William Home Lizars, a celebrated Scottish engraver. It appeared as Plate XXVII
in Volume II of The Natural History of Dogs...Including Also the Genera
Hyaena and Proteles, published in 1840, authored by Hamilton Smith, and
part of a major series of animal tomes edited by Sir William Jardine and
entitled The Naturalist's Library. I was also able to trace online the
relevant text concerning this mysterious hyaena from that volume, in which it
had been categorised as a form of the striped hyaena. On page 278, its
description then read as follows:
THE NAKED HYAENA OF THE DESERTS
OF NUBIA
Hyaena vulgaris [a commonly-used synonym of Hyaena hyaena]
This race is small and gaunt, entirely destitute of
hair, excepting the mane on the ridge of the neck and back. The bare skin is of
a purplish black, the body is short, and the tip of the tail is furnished with
a small brush.
I would have expected
an animal as visually arresting as this to be extensively documented. Yet
despite a diligent search online and through every relevant publication in my
not-inconsiderable personal zoological library, I have so far been unable to
uncover any additional information concerning it, not even the briefest of
mentions. It is as if it never existed. So how can Nubia's anomalous naked
desert hyaena be explained, and what has happened to it?
As Jardine
classed it as a form of the striped hyaena, the naked desert hyaena presumably
belonged to the latter species' Nubian subspecies, Hyaena hyaena dubbah,
which does inhabit desert fringes (though not the interiors of true deserts) and
sub-desert terrain. However, this subspecies possesses a normal, uniformly fully-furred
pelage, not just a dorsal mane, tail tuft, and a few very restricted areas of
hair elsewhere.
Normal striped
hyaena, sketch from 1902 (public domain)
Could it be,
therefore, that the naked desert hyaena was based upon some freak,
near-hairless individuals, yielding a local non-taxonomic variety? Or (as a
less plausible but more zoologically-intriguing alternative option) did it
constitute a discrete race, distinct from the typical Nubian striped hyaena,
which may have bred true? If the latter were correct, then the naked desert
hyaena would surely have represented a valid subspecies in its own right.
Yet as I am not
aware of any evidence suggesting that this extraordinary form still survives
today, the prospect of the naked desert hyaena being a non-taxonomic freak variety
of the Nubian striped hyaena seems the more rational of these two options, with
its limited number of specimens simply dying out without perpetuating their
strain. After all, bare skin is hardly an advantageous feature for a
surface-dwelling desert mammal's successful existence beneath an unrelenting
blazing sun, and is unlikely, therefore, to be actively selected for via
evolution's 'survival of the fittest' modus operandi.
The cause of a
freak hairless variety's nakedness would surely be the expression of some form
of mutant gene allele. Such a situation is responsible for hairlessness in a
number of other mammalian species, though different mutant alleles cause hairlessness
in different species (i.e. this condition is not caused by one and the same
allele across the entire spectrum of species known to exhibit freak
hairlessness).
A
second version of the Charles Hamilton Smith/William Home Lizars illustration
of the Nubian naked hyaena (public domain)
Having
considered genetic options, there are also some externally-induced possibilities
to consider. Foremost of these is that in reality, Nubia's naked desert
hyaena consisted of individuals suffering from some form of skin ailment, such
as mange (caused by tiny parasitic mites), whose debilitating effects may also
explain their small body size and gaunt appearance. In other words, these
creatures' growth may have been stunted, due to their ill health reducing their
ability to find food. Having said that, on first sight the distribution of hair
on the animal depicted in Smith's engraved artwork seems far too regular to be
explained in this way. Mange-infected animals often have irregular,
inconsistently-distributed patches of hairlessness.
In the most
severe cases of mange, however, sometimes the only fur remaining on an infected
animal is a prominent line of hair running down its neck and along its back, a
ruff around its neck extending from behind its ears and over its cheeks down to
its chin and throat, and sometimes a tuft at the end of its tail. This
description perfectly corresponds with the distribution of hair described by
Jardine for Nubia's naked desert
hyaena and depicted in Smith's representation of it.
Consequently, I
consider it most likely that this latter mystery beast, long banished from the
annals of natural history, was merely based upon one or more specimens of
mange-ridden, under-nourished hyaena that had been out-competed by bigger,
fitter, healthier hyaenas in the less environmentally-adverse areas at the
fringes of Nubia's desert, and had thus been forced to seek sanctuary amid this
desert's more arid, less hospitable interior instead.
The
Cuero specimen of Texas
blue hairless dog, preserved as a taxiderm specimen (© CFZ)
Support for this
theory comes from an ostensibly unexpected cryptozoological source – the
chupacabra. Or, to be more precise, from the so-called hairless blue dogs of Texas that have been frequently
if erroneously identified as blood-sucking chupacabras (especially in media
reports). The most famous example is the specimen that rancher Phylis Canion
found dead just in front of her ranch outside the small Texas town of Cuero on 14 July 2007. DNA samples were taken, which identified it
as a coyote, albeit one that apparently possessed at least a smidgen of Mexican
wolf ancestry too, thereby suggesting that a degree of hybridisation had
occurred between these two species at some stage in this creature's family
tree.
Media reports regularly
state that its blue-grey skin was completely hairless when it was discovered.
However, as he disclosed when investigating this intriguing animal, chupacabra
researcher Ben Radford noted that photographs taken of it by Canion on the day
that she found it outside her home clearly showed a conspicuous line of hair
running from behind its ears down its neck and along the centre of its back.
This is of course a classic indication of the presence of mange, and other 'hairless
blue dogs' on record have presented a similar appearance.
Also very
pertinent to this subject is the so-called 'Isle of Wight Monster' that had
been scaring people there since early autumn 1939, and was said by eyewitnesses
to possess the head of a lion. When it was finally snared and shot on 16
February 1940, however, the IOW Monster proved to be nothing more exotic than
an old fox with very advanced mange that had left a ruff of hair around its
neck, resembling a lion's mane, but very little fur elsewhere on its body.
Mexican
hairless dogs or xolos (public domain)
Providing a useful
contrast, in January 2010 a completely
hairless raccoon was found dead on the Runaway golf course in Wise County, Texas, where it had
quite likely frozen to death in the wintry weather. Originally, it was assumed
to have been suffering from mange, but when examined by biologists it was shown
not to have been after all. Hence its highly unusual condition was most
probably congenital (as is also true with the xolo, Mexico's famous
hairless dog breed), emphasising well that mange does not generally reduce an
individual to a state of total hairlessness.
Another
interesting specimen of relevance here is the horse with soft velvet-like skin
of a lilac-blue shade and totally lacking not only hair but also hair follicles
that was discovered in South Africa by a merchant
called Lashmar during 1860 (and which I've documented here on ShukerNature). He spied it among a herd of
quagga Equus quagga quagga (the semi-striped subspecies of plains zebra that became extinct in 1883),
successfully captured it, and brought it back to England in 1863, where
it was exhibited in London's Crystal Palace during February
1868.
What has never
been determined, however, is whether this remarkable animal was truly a
domestic horse – for if so, where had it come from? Alternatively, and much
more logically, might it have been a freak hairless quagga, thereby explaining
why it was associating with quaggas?
Illustration
of a blue horse produced by digital photo-manipulation that compares well with
the description of the South African/Crystal Palace hairless
blue horse (© Daisiem/worth1000 – reproduced here via the Fair Use convention on a strictly
non-commercial, educational use only basis)
Irrespective of
its precise taxonomic identity, it was the first of many hairless equine
individuals to be publicly displayed down through the years. Others of
prominence include Caoutchouc - a black, entirely hairless feral horse (even
lacking eyelashes) with skin resembling India-rubber that had been captured in Australia and was displayed
widely around the world during the 1870s; and two individuals from the 1890s.
One of these was Wild Nell, dubbed the 'India-rubber skinned mare'. The other
was Bluebell, the $25,000 'hairless wonder'. As with the totally hairless raccoon
from Texas and the Mexican hairless dog,
these horses' complete absence of hair was due to the expression of a mutant
gene allele, not to any external skin complaint.
A fourth
explanation for freak hairlessness is influence by non-pathological external factors,
such as climate and diet – and this is the explanation favoured by experts for
the gradual but ultimately near-total loss of hair suffered by three female
Andean spectacled bears housed at Germany's Leipzig Zoo and previously fully-furred.
Their plight and grotesque appearance hit media headlines worldwide during late
2009, but it transpired that a similar phenomenon had struck a number of other,
unrelated spectacled bears in captivity elsewhere around the world too -
thereby eliminating a common source of infection or a shared genetic fault from
consideration.
One
of the three hairless spectacled bears from Leipzig
Zoo (© EPA – reproduced here via the Fair Use convention on a strictly
non-commercial, educational use only basis)
In short,
hairlessness in mammals can be caused by a number of different factors, but
judging from its specific appearance I still favour mange or some comparable
skin infection as the most reasonable explanation for the naked desert hyaena
of Nubia. To my
knowledge, this is the first case of hairlessness in hyaenas that has ever been
brought to cryptozoological attention, and does not even appear to have
featured in any mainstream zoological works since Jardine's tome.
Indeed, it is
this very state of being conspicuous only by its absence that lends further
support to the likelihood that this hyaena is – or was - a short-lived,
unrepeated, pathologically-induced curiosity rather than a
genetically-engendered, non-taxonomic curiosity or local variety, or a distinct
taxonomic race. For if any of the latter possibilities were correct, I am
certain that something not only as morphologically memorable as a near-hairless
hyaena but also of such potential genetic and evolutionary significance would
have attracted ongoing scientific interest, leading to this beast's continued
documentation in the zoological literature.
Instead, like so
many other wildlife oddities, Nubia's naked desert hyaena was only of brief,
passing interest, and no doubt vanished from existence soon afterwards anyway, thereafter
to be forgotten for generations until I happened by chance to uncover what
seems to be the only illustration ever prepared of this fascinating creature,
and realised that here was a forgotten treasure from the dark vaults of
unnatural history that richly deserved to be retrieved and redisplayed. It was
ever thus.
A
third version of the Charles Hamilton Smith/William Home Lizars illustration of
the Nubian naked hyaena (public domain)
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