Meet the Urban Hyenas Working as Ethiopia's Nightly Cleanup Crew

In the bustling city of Mekelle, Ethiopia, a remarkable urban wildlife story is unfolding. Spotted hyenas, often misunderstood predators, have taken on a surprising role as the city’s sanitation crew, devouring food waste and contributing to a cleaner environment.

Abstract: We studied the diet of spotted hyenas... in and around Mekelle, northern Ethiopia... The diet of urban hyenas consisted almost exclusively of manageable-sized anthropogenic waste, which was sourced from a large open rubbish dump and from a number of smaller, informal garbage sites within the city.

In Mekelle, a city in northern Ethiopia, spotted hyenas have become a sort of nocturnal cleanup crew. They emerge after dark to feast on food scraps, bones and other organic matter discarded by humans.

For centuries, the people of Harar have lived alongside hyenas. A maze of alleyways runs through the old town, and each night, the city’s hyenas use them as a network of roads... a tradition of feeding the hyenas that has been passed down through generations.