I keep learning things about hyenas, this is pretty neat.

YAY! My purpose has been fulfilled. Glad you like hearing about yenas <3

Ofcourse I do :) Not had a chance to see them IRL yet though

One day I hope :D

sweet.

They are :)

Awesome :)

Thanks :D

Yeah, I had no clue about it until I saw a picture of an Aarwolf where the tapetum lucidium reflected back a catlike pupil shape, and then I saw Suren Manvelyan's photography.

http://www.surenmanvelyan.com/gallery/7116

Thank you for that link! It is WONDERFUL! I've not seen any shots of them before. She has some great ones!

Here's someone else's photo of an Aardwolf. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cincin.....in/photostream

Wow very neat!! :D

*waggwagg* What a fantastic shot! They say the eye is the window to the soul and you captured it perfectly! I just wish there was no fence. In a perfect world they wouldn't be. Keep up the great work, can't wait to see more. *hugs*

Ummm, if you could see their jaw pressure in person, you might not think that :)
Having that fence seems pretty damn perfect to me *chuckles*

The fence is quite reassuring for me (and them) and I don't mind the added difficulty compared to the cost of a new camera ;)
Bet the vid "Hyena eats DSLR" would get lots of hits on youtube tho ;)

Thanks! I like my camera intact so the fence is nice to have ;D but I will continue to try and get better shots without the fence :) Glad you like it! <3 *hugs!*

I SOOOO wish I would have talked to you before I did my suit! I chose round pupil eyes, because that's what I thought they had! I like their real pupil shape a lot better. ;D

If you are in very low light their pupils are round. If it is super bright sun they are almost just dots but with a slight tear drop shape. As the light decreases they turn into dumbbell shape (vertical) then the bottom opens up a bit more before the top (so bottom part of dumbbell is bigger than top) then as light decreases more they turn slitted (as above) then they turn completely (and seemingly perfectly) round.
The pic here (not mine): http://www.surenmanvelyan.com/photo/100184/7116/ has more slitted than the one I took because she was in a bit brighter light. I have YET another picture of the slotted pupils I will post. It is in morning sunlight and more dumbbell shaped like a goat, except vertical not horizontal.

So..there ya have it. Depends on what light there is. Just say you used the night time pattern ;)
For what it is worth my suit has round pupils too because it just looked better with the style my suit was in.

Wow, very that is an amazing pic! Thanks for all the great information and refs. I'm planning on redoing the head for my suit, so I think I will try for that intermediate slit shape for the pupils. Mind for I pick your brain when I start the new scupt? :>

You're welcome!
I'm eager to see what you come up with and you can ask me anything and request references. I owe you a reference CD anyway for all your help. I owe you bigtime so ask anything you like!

nice to know. i was not sure about the pupil shape of spotties. So they got same as brown or striped hyenas. What about aardwolves ?

I haven't seen brown or striped pupils up close. Someone posted a link to an Aardwolf above, looks to be similar to the spotted!

I've searched the web for the shape of hyena pupils for a few days now, since I want to commission a semi-realistic hyena/gnoll fursuit. The search resulted in more confusion. Most photos don't capture the pupils very well due to the bad contrast between the pupil and the iris. But those that do have captured this feature, shown both vertical slits and round ones.

I'll go with the slit ones, I think.

It depends on how much ambient light there is. When their pupils dilate they get round, so at night, dark or low light they will appear round. As the light gets brighter they shrink down to a dumbbell shape, then In full sun they appear teardrop or keyhole shaped. Never was able to get a series of pics showing their change. Ideally one day I’ll get a video. So you can defend your choice and say the slit is proper for the light level xD

Thank you very much for the information!

The only other close-up picture of the pupil I could find was this one: http://www.surenmanvelyan.com/eyes/.....mp;photo=Hyena
You can almost see the mentioned teardrop shape, if it wasn't for the reflection.

That's an awesome picture!! Thanks for sharing!