FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

A carnivore with an underbelly that defies description

- HOLLY EXLEY

THIS IS MY FINAL column and I've loved introducing you to the extraordinary diversity of the female experience. But I have saved the most badass till last: the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta).

Few animals have been more misunderstood than the hyena - historically described as a cowardly, grave-robbing brute, of indeterminable sexuality. According to Pliny the Elder, the Roman author of the world’s first animal encyclopedia, the hyena is “male during one year, and a female the next”.

Pliny’s sexual mythologising is a result of the female hyena’s unconventional genitalia - a near-perfect facsimile of the male’s. The