VIDEO: Pet Hyena – Fatal Attraction

People keep many unusual pets – from snakes and big spiders to foxes and chimpanzees.

The problem with those pets is that they are wild animals!

No matter how old they are when you get them, no matter how you raise them, they are still wild, dangerous animals.

At some point, they will act on instinct and things will not end well.

Take this man’s story for example – he had pet hyena.

According to Live Science, there are many misconceptions about hyenas. They aren’t just scavengers. Not all of them laugh. They aren’t wild dogs. They aren’t even related to dogs. Here are some facts to clear up these misconceptions.

Where hyenas live depends on their type. Brown hyenas have a very limited range and live only in Southern Africa, including the Kalahari and Namib deserts. They are usually found between the Angola-Namibia border and the Orange River in South Africa.

There are two distinct populations of aardwolves. One subspecies lives in southern Zambia, Angola and Mozambique, as well as northeastern Uganda and Somalia. The other subspecies extends into central Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

Spotted hyenas have a little bit larger range and live south of the Sahara Desert. They occur throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and are the most numerous large predators in the Serengeti.

The striped hyena has the largest range of all. It lives in north and northeast Africa, the Middle East and Asia, all the way to southern Siberia.

Hyenas can adapt to almost any habitat and are found in grasslands, woodlands, savannas, forest edges, sub-deserts and mountains as high up as 13,000 feet (3962.4 m), according to the National Wildlife Foundation.

Hyenas are very social and live in groups called clans. Clans can have up to 80 members, according to the National Wildlife Foundation.

Not only are spotted hyena females larger, they are also more aggressive and are dominate in their clans. All females rank higher than males in the clan. However, the brown and striped hyenas and aardwolves have male-dominated clans.

Aardwolves are insectivores, and they only eat termites. Though the termites secrete a toxin, aardwolves do not seem to be affected by it, according to ADW. They consume the termites by licking them off surfaces with a flat, sticky tongue. They can consume 30,000 termites every night.

The other hyena species are carnivores, which means they only eat meat. They are known to take advantage of other animals’ kills for easy meals, but they aren’t just scavengers. They also hunt and fill their diet with wildebeest, antelope, hippos, birds, jackals, lizards, fish, snakes, foxes, porcupines, eggs and insects.

The size of the meal often is determined by how large the hyena’s clan is. Clans work together to take down prey, so the bigger the animal, the more members the clan needs to have for a successful kill.

They often hide extra food in watering holes, since nothing is wasted. Hyenas will eat every part of an animal, including bones and hooves.

There are currently around 10,000 mature adult hyenas in the world, according to the National Wildlife Foundation. The hyena’s only predator is humans.