Fasting for Lent forces hyenas to change diet
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 18:00
in Biology & Nature
Many Christians give up certain foods for Lent, however ecologists have discovered these changes in human diet have a dramatic impact on the diet of wild animals. In Ethiopia, members of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church stop eating meat and dairy products during a 55-day fast before Easter. As a result, spotted hyenas too change their eating habits from scavenging waste from butchers and households to hunting new research in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology has found.