Much of my life has been characterised by a state of change. This is not unusual. For me, however, those changes have tended to be higher stakes than most. The most obvious example of this is my transition, but there’s been a lot of others as well. I’ve never been particularly good at living. I never learned to do it properly, and as I try to learn now it always seems to slip through my fingers. Still, I do feel my grip tightening. Something stays now when I clutch at it. I’m not sure what it is I’m clutching, yet, and I’m even less sure how it will change me when I find out.
But I digress. This post is about spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta).
All spotted hyenas have penises. Every single one of them. The female hyena has an enlarged clitoris that acts as a pseudo-penis. It’s one opening for the price of two: urination and reproduction. Beneath the pseudo-penis is the hyena’s vestigial labia, fused together to look like a scrotum. They are unique among mammals for these features. They’re in a similar boat to monotremes, I suppose, though at least echidnas and platypuses have each other for company.
This is not an efficient method of reproduction, which is probably why the pseudo-penis thing hasn’t caught on with other mammals. When a hyena has her first litter, the pups have a 60% chance of dying in birth. The standard mammalian vagina exists as it does for good reason. Yet despite this, hyenas live. More than that, they thrive. The spotted hyena’s diet, consisting of both hunting and scavenging, is the most well-adapted animal in its system. They’re smart, too, in many of the same ways we are smart. One thing that makes spotted hyenas so effective is their cooperation with one another. Hyenas learn, and they learn together. Female spotted hyenas are also larger and more dominant, taking leadership positions in their social hierarchy. Hyena communities can reach up to 80 individuals. They’re highly social and have intricate social rituals. There’s no word on whether hyenas can have autism. There’s so much we don’t yet know about the world. Female hyenas’ penises, as well as their dominant social behaviours, are the result of elevated androgen levels during their fetal development. Hormones, like animals, are the subject of a great deal of human projection, especially recently. A lot of humans are particularly suspicious of testosterone, which is very strange. You may as well be suspicious of the pancreas. Hyenas don’t particularly care what we think of hormones. They only care about hyena things. This is the miracle of the hyena: they posses such strange, even inefficient biology, yet still they thrive.
I share a miracle with hyenas.
Before you panic, don’t worry. I’m not terribly interested in giving an anatomical description of my genitals. It’s easy to find information if you’re curious about what testosterone does to the body. The point is, the point is. A miracle occurs, and we share it.
You may argue, I suppose, that there is nothing miraculous about it; that it is a matter of nature and evolution. I do not think this is incompatible with miracle. It may even be a prerequisite. I’ve never bought the idea that evolution is incompatible with a religious worldview. How can you hear about the slow changes, the gradual adaptation, leading us all to the here and now, all alive together, and not think of it as a miracle? The same is true of the fallacy of opposition between religion and queerness, a topic in which I have a particular vested interest. If you’re looking for miracles, the miracle of transsexuality—of becoming—feels like an obvious place to start.
let’s be freaks of nature with mama
There is a tendency to imagine evolution as a streamlining process. “Survival of the fittest” is taken to indicate efficiency. This is not necessarily the case. The point of evolution is variety, and sometimes innovation is roundabout. The goal is not only to reproduce, but to grow. Genetic pools without enough variation begin to decay. Whomever believes that nature will always find the simplest solution lacks imagination. Evolution isn’t teleological; not driven by an end goal. It occurs as a response to an organism’s environment, and certain environments require certain creative solutions. The hyena thrives because it is fittest, and part of its fitness is its strangeness. Evolution is also not a matter of results, but of change. To live, to live well, we must change.
There are, of course, some notable differences between me and a hyena. I lack an interest in wildebeest carcasses, for instance. I don’t compete with lions on a regular basis. I do make a series of weird noises throughout the day. What I do share with hyenas interests me terribly. Mammals with testosterone levels elevated beyond what is expected for our sex and with associated physiological changes. Hyenas didn’t choose these traits, but then again, neither did I, really. In theory, I could have stayed the same. For a long time, I was convinced to stay the same. But once the idea is there, it’s hard to shake. You realise that there is another option, and once you become aware of that option, every other option starts to feel a lot like death. Hyenas don’t think about it as an option, of course. They just do what’s in their nature. They have no reason to agonise over this growth. When times are hard, you change yourself or you die. This is the most fundamental aspect of evolution.
Hyenas don’t have especially good reputations. In African traditions, they’re commonly depicted as sinister and stupid. In Western culture, they’re considered sinister and stupid and ugly. The Physiologus, a second century CE bestiary from Alexandria, originally composed in Greek. The hyena is entry number 58. The author of the Physiologus claims that because spotted hyenas are of box sexes at once, they are untrustworthy. There’s really nothing new under the sun. Humans think of their apparent intersexuality as unnatural, though it’s anything but. Hyenas’ anatomy is as natural as our own ability to walk upright.
As I keep discovering in writing this newsletter, it is impossible to talk about animals without telling stories about them. This is our own inefficient strength: information becomes narrative. The narrative of the hyena as abomination; the narrative of it as miracle. Adaptation is universal among organisms. In that sense, the hyena is nothing special. Their bodies are special to me, though. How wonderful it is to look at nature, the thing I adore so much, and see myself reflected back. I’ve never been convinced there is a great, metaphysical difference between us and other animals. What difference does exist is the same difference between a hyena and a lion. We are different versions of living. The hyena, especially, lives well because it is changed into something weird. I’m not sure what I’m becoming, yet, but like the hyena, I’m sure it will be miraculous and strange. There are few other options, and I wouldn’t choose those, anyway.