Can hyenas be 'police dogs'? Why?

This is a question of private messages from friends. The idea of ​​hyenas as "police dogs" is a bit interesting. After all, hyenas are very powerful in combat. Needless to say, they are not inferior to dogs, even if they are more wolves than wild horses. It acts as a "police dog", a vicious person who only needs a "pull out" to solve the problem in minutes. However, the friend who asked this question obviously regarded the hyena as a dog. Although a hyena has "dog" in its name, it is not a dog, and it is not even a canine. Therefore, even if a hyena is used as a police officer, it is not a "police dog", and the habits and character of a hyena are not suitable for police use at all. Why do you say that? Let's talk about this together. (Four animals under the Hyena family)

Dogs are domesticated from wolves. According to the statistics of the American Kennel Club, there are currently 178 purebred dogs, and there are countless hybrid dogs. Among so many dog ​​breeds, there are no more than 10 kinds that can be used as police dogs. The more common ones are German Shepherd, Labrador, Malinois, Rottweiler and so on. So, what are the characteristics of these dogs selected as police dogs?

Although the specific work of different breeds of police dogs is different, and each has its own strengths, but in general, they all have the following characteristics:

1st: medium size

From the perspective of our common medium-sized police dogs, they are all medium-sized dogs. This is because large dogs have poor flexibility, and small dogs have insufficient fighting power. Therefore, dogs with medium size (in the range of 40-60 kg) have become police dogs. selection interval criteria. Such dogs are stamina, explosive, and very flexible.

Second: strong obedience

If you want to be a police dog, obedience is often the first priority, because police dogs are mostly used for dangerous tasks such as tracking, anti-drug, and search. This task has a low fault tolerance rate. Therefore, police dogs must have super obedience, so that In order to ensure their own safety on the premise of completing the task quickly.

Third: bold and ferocious. Police dogs are often on the front line. They are faced with vicious gangsters. Therefore, if you want to be a police dog, you must be bold and fierce.

Fourth: IQ. A high IQ has two advantages: easy training and low error rate. Among our common police dogs, the Rottweiler ranks ninth in the dog's IQ ranking, the German Shepherd ranks third, and the Labrador retriever ranks seventh. It can be seen that the IQ of quite police dogs is also an important reference standard. Seeing this, some friends will ask: Why not use the border collie, which ranks first in IQ? The answer to this question is also very simple. Too high IQ is not a good thing, because too high IQ has the ability to think independently, and its obedience will inevitably weaken.

Summary: Not everyone can be a police dog. It needs to have a high IQ, but not too high. It is also bold and careful, and has strong obedience.

Hyenas are stronger than any of the above police dogs, and their ferocity is unmatched by dogs. On the African savannah, they dare to besiege lions and single-handed leopards, which is enough to prove their boldness and ferocity. , and according to the observations and research of zoologists, hyenas are very intelligent animals, they have a complex "language system" (communicate with various tone-changing calls), and the Asian Animal Foundation has used hyenas and The IQ of tigers and leopards has been tested, and the result is that hyenas have higher IQs than both. It can be seen that hyenas can meet three of the four characteristics of "police dogs". Why are hyenas not suitable for police use? There are two reasons:

First: Obedience

The obedience of hyenas to humans is almost zero, because hyenas have never been domesticated. In Africa, many people have tried to domesticate hyenas, but all of them have failed. Many of them have raised hyenas since childhood, but when the hyenas grow up, people have to put a cage on the hyena's mouth to prevent the hyena Timed bites.

So why are hyenas so hard to domesticate? For this we can refer to the only large carnivore domesticated by humans - the wolf. Humans were able to domesticate wolves because in the early days, some wolves took the initiative to pick up and eat human garbage near the living area of ​​humans. Later, their salivary amylase activity mutated and could adapt to a high-starch life, which gave humans the opportunity to interact with food. Chance. However, hyenas have never lived near humans, and they only eat meat, which makes it difficult for humans to have a chance to communicate with them, and pure carnivores are extremely difficult to domesticate. Therefore, hyenas have not been domesticated since ancient times. Even the domestication has not been completed, so naturally there is no need to make it "work".

Second: Quantity and Habits

Police dogs are selected from many dogs. These dogs are large in number and convenient for breeding, but hyenas are different. They belong to protected animals. Take the most ferocious spotted hyena in the hyena family. They belong to low-risk animals. , distributed only on the African savannah. Let's not talk about how long it takes to domesticate them, just as a protected animal, it must be impossible for hyenas to be widely promoted as police. Secondly, it is unknown whether the spotted hyenas living in the tropics can adapt to temperate and frigid regions.

The reason why a hyena cannot be a "police dog" is that it is not a dog in the first place, and a hyena has never appeared on the domestication list of humans. Therefore, even if a hyena is fierce and has a high IQ, it does not have any obedience to humans. , Therefore, from the point of view of operability, hyena police use is also unreliable.