Spotted hyenas are among Africa's most socially complex carnivores. Their matriarchal clan systems, coalition politics, and cognitive abilities create rich welfare lives dependent on stable social structures.
Spotted hyena welfare reflects their position as highly social, cognitively sophisticated carnivores in landscapes increasingly dominated by humans. Their complex clan social structure provides individual welfare benefits — cooperative defence, shared pup-rearing, coordinated hunting — but creates intense social competition, particularly among cubs and subordinate females. Human persecution is the dominant welfare threat: hyenas are widely poisoned for livestock predation and snared as a byproduct of other poaching. Their intelligence and social bonds mean that clan disruption from targeted killing cascades through group welfare, disrupting cooperative behaviours and increasing individual vulnerability. Coexistence programmes that protect livestock while reducing retaliatory hyena killing deliver welfare benefits proportional to hyenas' social and cognitive complexity.