Among the Bone Eaters ─ Encounters With Hyenas in Harar

Large carnivores in wild places are usually studied by biologists inside vehicles using telemetry and noninvasive methods. So what happens when an anthropologist studies a clan of spotted hyenas, Africa's second-largest carnivores, up close, and in a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants? In Among the Bone Eaters Marcus Baynes-Rock takes us to the ancient city of Harar in Ethiopia, where the gey waraba (hyenas of the city) are welcome in the streets, and appreciated among the locals for the protection they provide from harmful spirits and dangerous 'mountain' hyenas. They've even become a local tourist attraction.

"In addition to the difficult conditions, stone-throwing children, and intransigent bureaucracy, Baynes-Rock had to contend with a clan of hyena subjects intent on avoiding people. After months of frustration, three young hyenas drew him into the hidden world of the Sofi clan. He learned the elements that make up a hyena's life, from the delectability of dead livestock and the nuisance of dogs to the unbounded thrill of hyena chase-play under the light of a full moon. Baynes-Rock's personal relations with the hyenas from the Sofi clan expand the bounds of how human-animal relations are conceived. This is multispecies ethnography taken to its logical realization, revealing its messy, intersubjective, dangerously transformative potential, dissolving distinctions between human and animal so all that matters is subjects and how they affect each other.

Marcus Baynes-Rock is a research associate with the University of Notre Dame. He divides his time between Indiana, Ethiopia, and northern New South Wales, where he lives with his wife and baby daughter.