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<\/p>\n\n Every night, Abbas Yusuf crosses the ancient walls of the holy city of Harar, Ethiopia, and starts calling the animals by name.\n <\/p>\n
\n Kamariya, \u201clike the moon.\u201d Chaltu, \u201crefined.\u201d And his favorite, Jarjaraa, \u201cthe hurrying one.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n A spotted hyena steps out of the darkness and takes a strip of meat from a stick he holds between his teeth.\n <\/p>\n
\n To Abbas, these carnivores are welcome visitors. \u201cI prepare the meat,\u201d he says, in his native Oromo language. \u201cAnd the guests who come, I take care of them and see them off in peace.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Abbas is one of Harar\u2019s last \u201chyena men,\u201d holding onto the tradition of feeding one of Africa\u2019s most feared predators \u2014 even inside his home.\n <\/p>\n
\n He has become something of an attraction, with visitors paying to see the nightly feeds and have their photos taken up close with the wild animals.\n <\/p>\n
\n Night hunters with an evil-sounding \u201claugh,\u201d hyenas have earned a worldwide reputation as the villains of the savanna. But in Ethiopia, new research suggests hyenas could help solve the country\u2019s problem of urban waste, improve public health \u2014 and even help in the fight against climate change.\n <\/p>\n
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\n North of Harar, in Mekelle \u2014 capital of the Tigray region \u2014 wildlife ecology expert Dr. Gidey Yirga has been studying urban hyenas for over 15 years.\n <\/p>\n
\n Yirga explains hyenas have \u201cvery flexible behavior\u201d: Living in large matriarchal societies<\/a>, they often hunt and raise their cubs cooperatively. They are formidable predators and may turn to scavenging when the opportunity arises.\n <\/p>\n \n As Africa becomes increasingly urban, hyenas and other wild animals are brought closer to human life, especially toward landfills. When night falls in Mekelle, wild hyenas \u201ccommute\u201d from their underground dens on the outskirts into the city\u2019s landfills.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n A recent study<\/a> led by Yirga at the University of Sheffield and Mekelle University found that urban scavengers in Mekelle \u2014 from hyenas to vultures and stray dogs \u2014 process nearly 5,000 metric tons of organic waste a year, saving the city council $100,000 in waste disposal costs. Spotted hyenas do 90% of the work.\n <\/p>\n \n In a city with patchy waste collection, their cleaning services cut carbon emissions from the decomposition of organic waste and recycle the nutrients of leftover meat that would otherwise rot on roadsides. According to another study<\/a> by Yirga, they also stop the spread of deadly diseases like anthrax and bovine tuberculosis.\n <\/p>\n \n These \u201cecosystem services\u201d are well-received by residents, with 72% of over 400 households the researchers interviewed seeing hyenas and other scavengers as beneficial.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe urban scavengers benefit from the waste that residents dispose of, and local residents benefit from the waste-clearing services of these species,\u201d Yirga tells CNN. \u201cIt\u2019s a mutualistic interaction.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Yirga explains that while coexistence is generally peaceful, the 2020-2022 Tigray war strained the relationship: as hyenas had less to scavenge, those near battle sites preyed on more livestock<\/a> and fed on human remains. Many internally displaced people still live in crowded camps on Mekelle\u2019s outskirts, leaving them vulnerable to hyena attacks.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n In a previous study across four Ethiopian cities<\/a>, Yirga found that people\u2019s perceptions of hyenas vary greatly. While in Mekelle they are respected as cleaners, in the southern city of Arba Minch they are seen as \u201cnuisance animals\u201d and in Harar \u2014 home of the hyena men \u2014 they are revered.\n <\/p>\n \n Harar\u2019s UNESCO-listed old town has been a place of coexistence between humans and hyenas for at least 500 years.\n <\/p>\n \n Its 16th-century walls<\/a> were raised with several small openings at their base, known by locals as \u201cwaraba nudul\u201d \u2014 hyena holes. At night, the animals cross the wall in packs to scavenge the meat discarded by local butchers.\n <\/p>\n \n What started as a way to prevent attacks on livestock and people by keeping hyenas fed turned into the tradition of hyena men, who feed them by hand and by mouth.\n <\/p>\n \n Abbas learned the practice from his father \u2014Yusuf Mume Salleh \u2014 who began feeding his hyena neighbors in the 1950s to keep them away from his goats.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI would prepare the meat every day,\u201d Abbas tells CNN. \u201cWhen my father was feeding them, I would watch. After that, I stopped being afraid of them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n He was seven when he started and took over his father\u2019s work in his twenties.\n <\/p>\n \n Marcus Baynes-Rock, an anthropologist who spent years studying this coexistence and later wrote \u201cAmong the Bone Eaters<\/a>,\u201d watched the elder Yusuf and his son at work.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cHe didn\u2019t just see them as animals. He saw them as persons with different personalities and different places within hyena society,\u201d Baynes-Rock tells CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n He explains the relationship was built slowly as they became habituated to each other\u2019s presence. Yusuf did not train them in any traditional sense, but he learned to read each one\u2019s behavior, rank and temperament.\n <\/p>\n \n In turn, the hyenas came to recognize the father-and-son feeders, and the names they gave them. Humans and hyenas were adapting to each other in a mutually beneficial relationship, with one making a living from curious tourists and the other securing a meal.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe hyenas came and went at their leisure,\u201d Baynes-Rock wrote in his doctoral thesis, and \u201cOn nights when there were no tourists, the hyenas were still fed\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Unlike in other Ethiopian cities, residents of Harar see hyenas as spiritual cleaners as much as ecological ones. They are believed to consume jinn, malevolent spirits in Islamic tradition. \u201cPeople feel safer in the town,\u201d Baynes-Rock says, \u201cbecause the hyenas are chasing the jinn away.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In Harari, the local language spoken by fewer than 30,000 people, hyenas are known as \u201cwaraba,\u201d<\/a> meaning \u201cnewsman,\u201d and believed to carry messages from the spirit world.\n <\/p>\n \n Across Africa, the spotted hyena\u2019s habitat is shrinking. As farms and roads cut through their territory, hyenas turn to hunting livestock, and farmers turn on them.\n <\/p>\n \n Snared, poisoned and shot in retaliation for livestock attacks, their numbers are falling outside of protected areas, despite a widespread range and a population numbering between 27,000 and 47,000 individuals.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n For their three closest relatives \u2014 striped hyenas, the elusive brown hyenas<\/a> and aardwolves \u2014 the decline is even more alarming.\n <\/p>\n \n They are often seen as dangerous pests and the IUCN\u2019s Hyena Specialist Group has identified their negative reputation as a direct threat to their survival.\n <\/p>\n \n The fear of hyenas has deep roots. Humans and hyenas have competed for the same carcasses since our ancestors first started eating meat \u2014 at least 2.5 million years ago, Baynes-Rock says. He adds that modern culture has perpetuated that bias, as seen in Disney\u2019s animation classic \u201cThe Lion King\u201d and its portrayal of cackling, malicious packs of hyenas.\n <\/p>\n \n In Ethiopia, \u201cpeople don\u2019t just see hyenas through a single lens,\u201d Baynes-Rock explains. \u201cYou can say an animal\u2019s dangerous, but you can also see it as beneficial.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Urban scavengers across the world \u2014 from raccoons and crows in North America to adjutant storks<\/a> in India and Australia\u2019s white ibises, dubbed \u201cbin chickens\u201d \u2014 are still seen as nuisance pests.\n <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/gettyimages-453520036-20260506162302370.jpg\")
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