A spotted hyena pseudo-penis. Source for image.
I woke up this morning to check the comments on the blog. I normally do not close comments for older posts, and I often forget about the posts I wrote several years ago.
Some of them have never generated particularly good comments, and this particular one, which is not particularly profound or well-writen, is simply entitled “Hyenas are not dogs. They are actually more closely related to cats.“
The comments on there are pretty picayune and banal. The post was pretty picayune and banal, so what else would I expect?
Well, when I woke up this morning, I came across this gem, which I have to say is the worst creationist argument I’ve ever seen!
Here it is in all its glory:
Sorry, Hyenas are dogs. I do not care what you say. Evolution is a theory and has never been proven. Hyenas are not cats, and are not related to ferrets, weasels, civets, are any other animal. They are dogs plain and simple. If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck its a duck. Weasels, ferrets, civets, mongoose etc., do not look like dogs. Rest my case. Hyenas are dogs.
I hope this person is just acting a Poe.
It’s hard to tell with these creationists though. It really is.
I am having a hard time reading it without having blood vessels pop out.
First of all a ferret or a weasel is a Caniform Carnivoran. Caniforms are all closely related to dogs, though they are much closer in resemblance to primitive Caniformia than Canids (“the dog family”) are. The fact that they look like mongooses is really quite irrelevant.
Secondly, spotted hyenas look nothing like dogs, and only a really superficial examination of striped and brown hyenas would lead one to believe that they are anything like a dog. I know that the German and Afrikaans-speaking settlers to southern Africa called the brown hyena a “strandwolf.” The term means “beach wolf,” which is in reference to the ubiquity of brown hyenas along the Skeleton Coast, where they scavenge flotsam and jetsam and sometimes hunt fur seal pups. They were called wolves for the same reason that the same people called a giant antelope a moose. The eland antelope species of Africa are actually named after the Dutch/Afrikaans word for moose, which is eland. And it wasn’t just the eland antelope. Gemsbok, a type of oryx, share the same name with the chamois of Europe. Steenbok is the Dutch name for the Alpine Ibex. Rhebok are named for the Dutch/Afrikaans name for the European roe deer. All of these animals antelope, but none of their European namesakes are.
They also called the spotted hyena the “tiger wolf.”
But people giving animals inappropriate common names is pretty common in just about every language. What we call a moose, the Europeans call an elk. What I call a robin is more closely relate to a European blackbird than to the European robin.
So ignore the names.
Let’s talk phylogeny.
Dogs and hyenas really don’t look that much like each other. All living species of hyenas, except the aardwolf (another misnamed “wolf”), have evolved a bone crushing capability in their jaws that no living dog has. However, in North America, there were once dogs that had this bone crushing capability. These dogs, called the Borophaginae (“bone crushers” or “bone eaters”) live between 36—2.5 million years ago in North America. Some of them were giants, and many were quite well-adapted eating the bones of megafauna.
No living dog is a true bone-eater. They will eat bones, but they will never crush them with efficiency of any species of hyena or one of those Borophagine dogs. (If you want to find out more about the evolution of bone crushing in Borophaginae and hyenas, check out this lecture at the Royal Tyrell Museum. It’s very fascinating.)
Then there is the DNA. We’ve been able to construct phylogenetic trees based upon genetic material. Every study that has examine Carnivoran DNA has placed hyenas with the Feliformia. They are most closely related to the true civets, which is the family Viverridae. They did evolve into something like a dog, and if you watch that lecture at the Royal Tyrell Museum, you’ll see that more primitive forms of hyena actually looked a lot more like dogs than modern ones do.
When phylogenetic trees are drawn from DNA samples, dogs fit with bears and seals (and the walrus and “eared seals”).
Hyenas and dogs are out of two entirely different lineages that split about 42 million years ago.
The fact that they superficially look alike is not evidence of a common designer at all.
The big difference between dogs and spotted hyenas in particular is their social structure. All dog societies, save domestic dogs and some red foxes, are base upon a mated pair in which there are no great size or phenotypical differences between males and females. In spotted hyena societies, the females are larger and have dominance over the males. Status is inherited from mother to daughter, which does not happen in any species of dog.
And one way the females maintain their dominance is through a fluke in their anatomy. Female spotted hyenas have genitalia that strongly resembles a male’s penis, but it’s actually the clitoris. And it’s through this tube that female spotted hyenas urinate, copulate, and give birth through this pseudo-penis. Female hyenas have absolute control over mating because they can move this “device” to prevent copulation. All a female dog can do is sit down with her tail between her legs and growl.
No dog species has this feature.
The only other mammal that has anything like this is the fossa of Madagascar. It is sort of a mongoose that became a cat. The females of this species are born with a pseudo-penis that becomes a “normal” clitoris as the animal mature.
Fossas were once thought to be civets, but like all Malagasy carnivorans, they are now believed to be more closely related to mongooses.
But it really doesn’t matter. Both mongooses and civets are Feliformia, as is the hyena.
And it does point to common ancestry, even if the rest of their relatives do not have this feature.
A spotted hyena is not a dog with a pseudo-penis.
This same argument if taken even further would lead one to believe that a thylacine was nothing more than a wolf with a pouch on it.
Thylacines looked a lot like wolves. (See this page at the Thylacine Museum to see how similar they were). Even trained anatomists have mistaken thylacine remains for those of wolves.
They actually looked much more like dogs than hyenas do.
And they are absolutely not related to dogs at all!
They are most closely related to either the quolls, which look like miniature arboreal thylacines, or to the numbat, which looks like a thylacine that evolved into an anteater. (It eats nothing but termites, but it has the anteater’s long tongue!)
These animals are all marsupials. They share no close ancestors with dogs or anteaters or cat or any placental mamals at all.
The split between placental and marsupial mammals is even more distant– at least 125 million years ago.
Why do they look the same?
Because natural selection required that these animals evolve similar bodies to fill somewhat similar niches. (Though it should be noted that thylacines actually did behave more like big cats than wolves.)
Believe it or not, this dog-like form has evolved several times in the past. Not only do we have the aforementioned dog-like hyenas and the thylacine, but there was once a crocodilian that looked very much like a hairless coyote.
By this creationists’ logic, all these animals would be called dogs.
And they aren’t at all!
Yes, I do know I used scientific terms for female genitalia, which I know creationists like are icky.
But seriously, how dumb can you be!
One of my favorite books, “Innocent Killers”, written by Jane Goodall & her then-husband, Hugo van Lawick, describes their studies in the field of hyenas, jackals, & painted dogs. Of course, she is much better known for her work with chimpanzees, but her work with the hyenas and canids is just as detailed, insightful, and fascinating. The book is well-illustrated, too.
Curiously enough, the other large cursorial African pack hunter, the painted dogs, also live in matriarchal groups. I suppose the same could even be said of lions, because even though the males are much larger and do take the “lion’s share” of food, the females form a matriarchal society among themselves, usually all closely related to one another but unrelated to whatever male or males happen to be with the pride.
“Hyenas are dogs because they have four legs and a longish snout and because I said so, so there!”
—- I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe this biologically misinformed person is just a troll trying to yank your chain.
OH, and “if it quacks like a duck” doesn’t stand up, either. Hyenas don’t bark or howl like dogs at all. They have their own unique sounds that sound nothing like those of dogs (or ducks, for that matter :-) ) They also don’t run like dogs; their odd conformation, front limbs longer that rear, gives them a distinctive cantering gait.
Creationists don’t believe in species they believe in ‘kinds’. Which is a super-vague term that allows them to fit ‘every kind’ of animal onto their literal version of the ark story.
The sad thing is that otherwise intelligent people sit around and think that shit up.
Check out this snippet from a creationist magazine regarding hyenas. I think it was written by a certain John Blanchard, but it seems the entire article was taken down…
http://carnivoraforum.com/topic/9886248/1/
Don’t let the troglodytes yank your chain Scottie. This person is engaging in willful ignorance. No amount of empirical data is going change his/her mind so just write him/her off.
I was going to say something along the similar lines. Glad you said it.
You know what I wrote about how West Virginians keep crows out of the garden?
You shoot one, and you hang it up and the others won’t come back.
You have to do something similar with creationists. On my comment guidelines, I have promised to do excoriate them on the blog.
I actually rather did enjoy writing this. I’m not angry at all!
I grew up as a type of creationist,similar to Deism. Believing that God created the world but also believing in evolution. I never believed in the story of Adam and Eve either,I believed such stories where taught for moral reasons. It was never a strict Christian community either so my friends and family where the same way.
Hyena’s are their own creatures neither dog nor cat. As a child I used to believe they where closer to dogs,but not actually in the canid family. As a young teen I heard that they where closer to cats.
My grandfather often said: “All the fools aren’t dead yet”. I expect that will be true for a long time to come.
I think it’s better to laugh at these guys than to get worked up.
But then, I’ve never lived anywhere where Creationism was respected.
It can get pretty wearing (and scary) Jen–think Christian Taliban. One of my Facebook family/friends recently posted that while getting a burger he was accosted by an employee who wanted to “save” him. When this fellow politely declined the offer, said employee followed him out to the parking lot and said he’d like to “hold him down and drive the demons out of him.”
One of the reasons I avoid going back to Chicago to visit kin is because its just so exhausting to be bombarded with religiosity all day long–its just too much. I’ve gotten to an age now where my tolerance for this kind of proselytizing is nil–I know that I’d just end up offending them all. If I want or need religion, I know where to go to get it.
Yikes! While I am a creationist, I really do hate seeing people doing these types of things when they really don’t know what they are talking about. I really don’t like being under the same umbrella as these folks.
I am among a good number of creationists who do believe in evolution, in a way. Speciation and evolution within species is scientifically proven without a doubt. How other creationists don’t at least concede to this fact, I do not understand. Micro-evolution fits perfectly within the beliefs of (non-fanatical) Christianity. But I don’t think creatures have evolved much outside forming new species. Maybe my views will change someday, as I do try and be somewhat open-minded.
However, I still greatly enjoy reading your blog. I just agree to disagree on some things. There is no good reason to show up on someone’s own blog and shove my religion down their throat, and I really wish others were more gentle. So unless I have something to say that will benefit your blog, I will say nothing and silently enjoy the majority of your posts.
And for the record, no, I don’t think a hyena is a dog just because it looks like one. :)
I have no real problem with theism (having used to be a theist).
I just found that I couldn’t stand up for science and reason and be a mainline protestant.
It was too much like having my cake and eating it too.
All the cool folks are heretical, don’tcha know! ;)
I think that something within the human psyche must need to believe in some sort of higher power. Otherwise the belief wouldn’t have arisen in every human society that we know of.
Now, as to the nature of that higher power – AH! There’s the question! Is there really a separate consciousness outside our own, a deity of some sort? Did that deity create in His/Her/Their/Its own image? Or was that vice versa – did Man create God in HIS image?
Or could it be that the conscious belief in a deity is a way to allow the individual’s subconscious to assume responsibility for working out problems, and the credit goes to the “deity”?
Maybe there was some evolutionary advantage to our species’ development of belief in a higher power. But Jesus! We sure have taken it to extremes! ;-p
I just can’t bring myself to label myself an atheist. Even Carl Sagan, the dean of intelligent skepticism, stopped short of that. I want to believe that there is something there, whether it takes a personal interest in the everyday lives of individuals or not. I want to believe in some sort of afterlife; in some sort of structured order to the universe. I’ve never been a mainline Protestant, either (although they tried hard to raise me that way).
Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any science far enough advanced beyond our own would seem like magic to us. I think that there’s room for spirituality and religion, it may even be necessary to us in some way. But it can’t be allowed to override science and reason.
One of my favorite poems, that underlies the basis for my hippie-dippy religion, has a stanza that reads
“You are a child of the universe, No less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.”
I love that.
I agree w/ most of what you said here k. You and I might disagree as to whether there is room for religion tho.
Here’s something even scarier from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation entitled: “DRONES FOR CHRIST”: THE HORRIFYING PROSPECTS OF MERGING CHURCH & STATE IN THE U.S. MILITARY
Liberty University trains armed drone pilots for US wars
How Jerry Falwell’s Liberty U.—the world’s largest Christian university*—became an evangelist for drone warfare.
First came the “Jesus Rifles,” then “Jesus Loves Nukes,” and now “Drones for Christ”: Article starkly illustrates the immense gravity of MRFF’s mission.
http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/07/drones-christ
*Note: This, at the same time that Grace Univ.–a Christian college in Omaha, has rescinded a scholarship for a woman because she’s Gay and that’s ‘immoral’. They’re also demanding all $$ already paid out be refunded.
Its all about love and tolerance don’t you know.
I don’t quite agree that hyenas don’t look like dogs.
After seeing these pictures of hyena pets, I would have surely mistaken them for some breed of dog I had never seen before had I not read the descriptions:
And what kind of sadistic and rather stupid “intelligent creator” makes a female mammal with penis shaped genitalia that she has to give birth through? Female spotted hyenas have quite a high death rate while giving birth due to having to pass a 2 pound cub through an inch wide birth canal that protrudes about 6 inches from their body – imagine passing several one litre bottles of cola through your willy in quick succession…
…gentlemen, I apologise – you may uncross your legs and wipe away your tears now. All species of wild canid have a relatively large birth canal and give birth to small whelps. So much for hyenas being dogs, eh. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s might be a dancing platypus blowing a duck lure.
And to think many of these same people who tout creationism refuse point blank to entertain the idea of humans being related in any way to great apes, despite humans physically looking/acting far more like a chimpanzee than a hyena does an african wild dog. I don’t know how I’m going to break the news to the bearcoat that she’s a lion rather than a dog.
LMAO at “dancing platypus blowing a duck lure.”
Love your post. Love most of the posts here. If these are representative of Retriever people, I think I will get a Retriever! I personally am a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel person. I don’t know what most Cavalier people think, but considering that the Cavalier (and really, all “pure breed dogs”) are stunning examples of human-engineered evolution, I hope that we are not so stupid as to believe in creationism. P.S. I live in San Diego. A small town in SD County, Santee, has an actual “Creation Museum.” A classic oxymoron, emphasis on the “moron.” East San Diego County is a hotbed of creationists and, by sheer coincidence I’m sure, white supremacists and similar trogs. Au revoir, keep up the good work.
The Fossa looks like a Tayra, Fisher, Sable (weasel type), or Otter. Most of the weasels are cute and have beautiful fur. But they are hunters.
Not even in the same part of Carnivora. There are Caniformia (weasels and other Mustelids, which are the other animals you’ve mentioned). Fossas are feliformia (mongooses, civets, cats and hyenas).
I agree with what kittenz said about people everywhere seem to feel a need to believe that there is more out there than just the rational. Its fun to believe in magic. It is comforting to believe in life after death. Bigfoot is mysterious, bears are not. But “what to believe?” That’s the question, and each religion, and each independent, has their own beliefs.
We can only prove the rational and the scientific, and the input from the senses of various people, but people continue to believe in things outside of the provable. We often believe what we are taught to believe. But the children of atheist still believe in magical happenings which would defy what we observe in the physical world. And we are taught about Santa Claus, but we give up that as implausible, but people often continue to feel that there is more to the universe than what we can observe.
Some people are sure that they are correct, that their own belief is the correct one – this is often true of both atheists and the very religious (each sure that their own religion is the correct one).
Other people don’t feel the need to believe that they have found the only true correct answer – they can say “maybe i am right, maybe i am wrong” or “i don’t know”. It isn’t always that these people are still searching for an answer (though that is often the case), but sometimes an acceptance of the limits of humans – that none of us alive today was witness to any event from before the day of our birth.