From the London Review of Books, 30 June, p. 16 - "Hyena", one of two poems by John Burnside
Like something out
of Brueghel, maned in white
and hungry
like the dark, the bat
ears pricked, the face
a grey
velour, more cat
than dog, less
caracal
than fanalouc
or civet ...
Whoa! I don't want to give away the ending; besides, it's less the poem that interests me - sorry, John Burnside - than the zoology.
To begin with, what kind of hyena are we talking about? There are three species, the spotted, the brown, and the striped: on the basis of the details Burnside gives ("maned in white", "bat ears", "face a grey velour"), it can't mean the spotted, which barely has a mane at all; he might mean the somewhat scraggy-looking brown, though the mane is less striking than the white ruff under the chin; but taking it all in all, the spotted is the best fit:
And then come some interesting taxonomic details. "More cat than dog" seems counterintuitive, what with the long muzzle and the habit of hanging around in packs, but Burnside is perfectly correct. Hyenas and dogs are both members of the order Carnivora, but hyenas sit alongside your actual felids (cats, such as caracals) in the suborder Feliformia. "[L]ess / caracal / than fanalouc / or civet" seems to imply that, within the Feliformia, they sit nearer the viverrids (genets and civets) and the euplerids (an exclusively Madagascan bunch of mongoose-like animals, of which the best-known is the fossa): again, the consensus is that that's how it is.
That "fanalouc" is a puzzle, though. He seems to have confused two different animals: the falanouc and the fanaloka - both euplerids, and closely related. Which one does Burnside have in mind? Here's a falanouc:
And here's a fanaloka:
Of the two, the fanaloka is, to my eyes, more hyena-like in appearance, and arguably in lifestyle. While the hyena is famous for the bone-splitting strength of its jaws, the falanouc's teeth, set in a narrow, shrewish head, are adapted for soft-bodied creatures, for worms, frogs, slugs. At least the fanaloka (also known as the Malagasy or striped civet) hunts something crunchy, even if it's only small mammals, birds and lizards.
All of which leads me to conclude ... Well, nothing: I've been wasting your time here. If anybody can tell me what Brueghel Burnside had in mind, though, I'd be very grateful.