The national animal of Lebanon is the striped hyena. This elusive animal is not often seen by humans and only comes out at night. They are nonetheless a vital national symbol in Lebanon as well as a key lynchpin in the country’s ecology. They have an enormous range and can be found from the south of India to western Africa.
Striped hyenas feature very prominently in folklore in the Middle East, and they have played an important part in the imaginations of people in this part of the world for longer than we can imagine.
Today they continue to be very important to the modern state of Lebanon.
Let’s find out more.
What is the national animal of Lebanon?
The national animal of Lebanon is the striped hyena.
This iconic animal is of course part of the wider group of hyenas that are known as feliform carnivoran mammals, meaning that they are cat-like and belong to the same group as things like leopards, mongoose, civets, and of course spotted hyenas.
They are native to Africa, particularly the north and the east, as well as the Middle East, Central Asia, and India.
They are known as a “bone-cracking” group of hyenas as their jaws are uniquely equipped to break down and eat bones and their contents.
They are the smallest of these bone-cracking hyenas, retaining many primitive characteristics that other species have not kept hold of over evolutionary time.
They are mostly scavengers, as hyenas tend to be, but they are known to take down their own prey in some cases.
They are more or less completely nocturnal, generally only emerging in absolute darkness and rarely been found outside their dens past the sunrise.
In terms of their breeding habits, they are monogamous, meaning that both the mother and the father of a litter of cubs will play a role in raising them.
This is somewhat unusual among feliform animals as cubs are very often just raised by the mother.
Hyenas, though, have very strong social bonds but still only tend to live in pairs or sometimes small groups.
Striped hyenas have proportionally very large torsos set on short legs.
Their back legs are a lot shorter creating a defined slope in the back.
They are not territorial and this goes some way to explaining the extent of their range, as they often move around and find new dens and places to live, and often groups will overlap one another.
Why is the striped hyena the national animal of Lebanon?
The striped hyena is an important national symbol for a variety of reasons.
They are embodiments of Lebanon’s natural and wild habitats, important in that they are an inextricable aspect of the country’s wildlife and ecology.
Striped hyenas are symbols of natural beauty and despite their tendency to scurry about at night and safely eat rotten meat, they are nonetheless revered for their beauty and mystique.
In Lebanon and beyond, though, the striped hyena has been an important aspect of Middle Eastern and Asian folklore for a very long time.
Sometimes their body parts are considered to have magical properties and are used as charms or talismans.
They are even featured in the Hebrew Bible, so it’s plain to see that they have played an important role in local mythology since long before written records began.
Creatures of the night as they are, it is precisely in their elusiveness that they have been so important.
Seeing one is very rare and thus they are almost like nocturnal spirits.
Another reason they’ve been chosen as the national animal is that they are near threatened for a few reasons, and the Lebanese government hopes to draw attention to this.
How rare are striped hyenas?
In terms of estimated population figures, there are thought to be around 10,000 striped hyena sin the wild today.
Their numbers have steadily declined and they are listed as near threatened today, this is due to a few factors such as the decrease in its prey base due to human hunting and poaching.
They are also persecuted by humans for a few different reasons.
In terms of how likely you are to see one, though, the population figures do not matter a great deal; they are highly elusive and avoid human contact, not to mention that they are almost never out except in total darkness.
Can a striped hyena be tamed?
No, a striped hyena cannot and should not be tamed.
They are wild animals and any “taming” that could be achieved would be tentative and based on fear and submission.
There is no reason to attempt to tame a hyena and you should not want to keep one as a pet.
Even if it were “tamed”, having it around you would be incredibly dangerous as they have been known to attack humans in the past.
Again, wild animals cannot and should not be tamed, they should be left to their natural devices.
At least in the west, we tend to more familiar with spotted hyenas as the iconic enemy of the lion in Africa.
But the striped hyena is in many ways visually even more striking than the spotted hyena, and this is reflected in the way people in this part of the world have thought about striped hyenas for millennia.
They are culturally a very important animal and this is as true today as it has been for a long time.