Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta) Fact Sheet: Distribution & Habitat

Current distribution (from Honer et al. 2008 unless otherwise noted)

• Africa, south of the Sahara
• Native countries
  
• Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissaw, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Togo, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
• No confirmed evidence of occurrence in Egypt, Liberia or Lesotho
• Possible regional extinctions
• Algeria, Eritrea, and Togo
• Patchy distribution within this range
• Especially patchy in West Africa
• Often concentrated near protected areas
• More continuous in some southern and central African countries
• Chad, Central African Republic, southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Angola, Namibia, and portions of South Africa

Historical distribution

• Previously found across most of Africa and Eurasia (Werdelin and Solounias 1991)

Habitat generalists (from Honer et al. 2008)

• Found in a variety of habitats
• Semi-desert, savanna and open woodland, dense dry woodland, and montane habitats
• Absent, or at low density, in extreme desert and tropical rainforest habitat
• Logging roads provide access to forested areas which otherwise would not be inhabited

Altitudinal range

• 0-4,100 m (0-13,450 ft) (Honer et al. 2008)

Live near human habitations (Honer et al. 2008)

Spotted hyena distribution. Adapted from www.d-maps.com according to IUCN fact sheet. Click here or on map for detailed distribution (IUCN)

Honer et al. (2008)
Werdelin and Solounias (1991)