William Buckland and the Heyena Cave

In 1894, some 40 years after his death, I published a biography of my father, Dr William Butland. One of my favourite stories about him concerned a young African hyena called Billy, who was brought to England for scientific study, but became something of a pet. Billy made his debut as the youngest hyena in England, and ended his life some 25 years later as the oldest. This all came about because in a bone-filled cave that he was invited to explore near Kirkdale in Yorkshire, Dr Butland had found a portion of an ancient skull, which he believed belonged to a young hyena. He ransacked all the collections he knew for a recent skull of a young animal for comparison, but not finding one, he requested Mr Birchall, the great African traveller, to send him a live specimen of a young hyena. That animal was Billy, whose eating habits showed quite clearly that the way in which he cracked open the marrow bones of oxen, and refused those bones which contained no marrow, was exactly how his Yorkshire ancestors had behaved long before the arrival of man. So wonderfully alike were these modern bones in their fracture to those found in the cave, that judging from this point alone, it was impossible to say which ones had been cracked by Billy, and which by the aboriginal hyenas of Kirkdale. Also, Billy polished the sides and floor of his wooden den with his feet and hide, exactly as his ancestors had their cave. Just as the ancient beasts deposited copious quantities of dung, which whitened on exposure to air, after a dinner of bones, so did Billy produce many pounds of the same. Dr Butland later wrote how he had found teeth and bones of 23 other species apart from hyena. Among them, tiger, bear, wolf, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, ox, three species of deer, hare, rabbit, water rat, and mouse. Of birds' remains, he also found examples of raven, pigeon, lark, snipe, and a small species of duck. The broken and splintered bone fragments of Kirkdale were strewn all over the cave floor, even in the innermost and smallest recesses. Scarcely a bone had escaped fracture, and on some of the bones, marks could be traced which appeared to fit exactly the canine teeth of the hyenas that were also found in the cave. One of Dr Butland's companions collected more than 300 hyena canine teeth, suggesting that the cave was, during a long succession of years, inhabited as a den by hyenas, who dragged into its recesses the other animals whose remains were later found, mixed indiscriminately with their own.