Striped hyenas live alone or in very small family groups. They sleep all day in caves, hollow logs or old fox dens, and come out as the sun sets. Their big, sensitive ears can hear a beetle moving in the grass from many metres away.
Hyenas are scavengers, which means they eat things other animals have already left behind. They have the strongest jaws of any mammal of their size. They can crack open bones that wolves and foxes give up on - so they leave very little waste in the wild.
When a striped hyena feels nervous or excited, the long hair along its back stands straight up. This is called raising its mane. It makes the hyena look almost twice as big - a clever bluff that often scares off bigger animals without any actual fighting.
Lebanon chose the striped hyena as its national animal partly because it is brave, partly because it is patient, and partly because it survives in places where most other big animals can't. It has been spotted in the cedar forests, in the Bekaa Valley and on the dry slopes of the Anti-Lebanon mountains.