Felids Interactions - Interspecific Conflicts

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Hyenas belong to the suborder feliformia.

Python Eats Adult "Female" Hyena

Watch First-Ever Video of Python Swallowing Hyena : https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/...yena-kill/
The rare kill underscores the incredible hunting skills of Africa’s largest snake, the African rock python.

An African rock python (Python sebae) swallows a female spotted hyena - Crocuta crocuta (which are usually larger than males) in this footage from Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve. Video: Jos Bakker

By Michael Greshko

March 15, 2017

You could say this snake had the last laugh: Researchers in southwestern Kenya recently stumbled across a 13-foot-long African rock python (Python sebae) that was swallowing a 150-pound hyena whole.

Jos Bakker, a Dutch web designer on vacation, first spotted and filmed the rare incident at a swampy roadside in the Masai Mara National Reserve. In short order, Bakker and his tour guide passed word along to scientists at Fisi Camp, the field site of Michigan State University zoologist Kay Holekamp, who has studied Masai Mara’s spotted hyena clans since the 1980s. (Learn more about hyenas' intelligence and complex social lives.)

On the evening of March 1, Fisi Camp research assistants Mike Kowalski and Olivia Spagnuolo then went out looking for the snake, skeptical that a python could take down a carnivore as large and as smart as a hyena. “To my knowledge there has been no precedent for this in terms of documentation,” says Kowalski via email. “Large carnivores can certainly interact with large pythons, as their cubs are probably on the menu, but an adult lion or leopard or hyena would likely dispatch the python very quickly.”

But the next morning, they discovered what Kowalski described in a Holekamp lab blog post as “a gigantic rock submerged in a swamp”: a sated, swollen rock python that clearly had eaten something large.

By comparing Bakker’s footage with the snake before them, Kowalski and Spagnuolo were forced to conclude that the python had, in fact, ambushed the hyena and constricted it before it could get away—likely an epic struggle. Kowalski suspects that the rock python attacked the hyena as it wandered through a drainage area in search of an afternoon resting spot.
Fortunately, the python did not snack on one of their research subjects; its prey was likely a newcomer male seeking out a new clan before he met his untimely end.

“For the hyena, I would say this rock python had to be perfect,” says Kowalski. “If it did not immediately strike and coil the neck-chest region to immobilize the head, the hyena could've easily crushed the python's skull.”

Ambitious Appetites
If any snake is going to kill a hyena, it's the rock python: Africa's largest snake, which can get up to 25 feet long and weigh up to 200 pounds, is notoriously aggressive. They're "so mean, they come out of the egg striking," Kenneth Krysko, senior herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, said in a previous interview.
In its native habitat, sub-Saharan Africa, the African rock python eats small mammals, antelope, warthog, herons, and other animals.
In extraordinarily rare circumstances, the reptiles may even attack, constrict, or attempt to eat people.

Pythons and boids are known for their ambitious appetites: Indonesia’s reticulated pythons can take down and eat slow lorises, sun bears, and even adult Sulawesi pigs, which weigh between 90 and 150 pounds. Green anacondas in South America can comfortably eat capybaras, the world’s largest rodents. Reply