Runes of Magic US / AU

...no, really.

LOOK AT IT.


I made that myself, honestly.

It is a hyena, a Spotted Hyena (crocuta crocuta) to be exact.

Fantastic animals. Top african predators, far surpassing the vainglorious lions.

Why could it be deleted? Do lions run the show here too? Hyenas against the forum rules? Pray tell, my curiosity is tickled.

Yeah, when I was at Uni I found a book in the main library (not an easy thing to do as when they designed it the architect forgot to calculate the weight of the books in the plans, and therefore it can only hold about a tenth of what it should be able to, real genius moment there ) that was printed in 1888, iirc. It was a beautiful book about the wildlife of Africa, with what looked like hand painted plates. Largely it was a guide so you could tell what you had shot when on safari but was still very interesting (never attempt a head on shot at a lion as they have extremely thick skulls), but in the section on the Hyena it described them as 'cowardly, deceitful creatures, that steal babies and worship the devil'. Science at its finest, I feel.

Hyenas (spotted ones, the brown and the striped are just scavengers like Jackals, and though the Aardwolf is pretty cool, it isn't much of a Hyena any more) are amazing animals. Fun fact from Hans Kruuk who spent his life studying the animals of the Serengeti, 95% of Cheetah kills are Thomson's Gazelle. 97% of Thomson's Gazelle kills are made by the Spotted Hyena.

Obviously some minds cannot cope with beauty and art so succinctly rolled into 150x150 pixels.

Phillipine