Spotted hyenas are sometimes portrayed as cowardly scavengers, always laughing, always up to some kind of mischief. If you’ve ever seen Disney’s The Lion King, then you may already have that image in your head. Here in the non-Disney universe, spotted hyenas are actually fascinating creatures. For example, they hang out in matriarchal “clans,” and the females, with their aggressive behavior and pseudo-penises (large clitorises), are very difficult to tell apart from the males. But it turns out that spotted hyenas may be even stranger than we initially thought: they may use bacteria to help communicate with one another, suggests Michigan State University zoologist Kay E. Holekamp in a recent, amusing New York Times blog post.

Unlike many other carnivorous species, spotted hyenas do not mark their territory by lifting their legs and peeing. Instead, the animals produce a yellowish paste in their scent glands located above their anuses. The paste accumulates in adjacent pouches, which the hyenas then rub on grass stalks. In previous research, Holekamp and her students learned that the paste odor provides a wealth of information to roaming hyenas, such as the sex of the paste owner, ...