5 DECEMBER 1987, Page 34

The last laugh

Sir: I would like to put the record straight about hyenas, accused by Alice Thomas Ellis of eating `all the bits of dead things that lions leave' (Home life, 7 November).

In fact the opposite is the truth. The hyena hunts and kills at night. At dawn the more powerful lion will drive the feeding hyenas from their legitimate prey; at about midday, after her first aperitif, Alice Tho- mas Ellis arrives on the scene and sees the feeding lion surrounded by justifiably out- raged and barking hyenas.

Nathaniel Page

The British Embassy, Bangkok, Thailand