Harar Hyena Feeding: Tourist Show or Local Life?
Shortly before seven in the evening, the light drops fast in eastern Ethiopia. Just outside the old wall of Harar, a man settles on a low rock with a basket of raw camel meat beside him and whistles into the dark. Within a minute a spotted hyena steps out of the shadows, ears forward, and takes a strip of meat from a stick the man is holding between his teeth. Behind him, a row of visitors sits very still.
Nothing about the scene is easy to place. It is not a zoo, not a circus, not a safari. The animals are wild, the man is not in costume, and the money changing hands is real. So the honest answer to the question nearly every traveler asks is this: Harar's hyena feeding is a local practice that became an attraction, and it only works as long as both halves of that sentence are respected.
What Actually Happens at the Hyena Feeding
Where and when it happens
The feeding takes place outside the walls of Harar Jugol, the UNESCO-listed old city, and begins shortly after sunset, usually around 6:30 pm and rarely later than 7:30 pm depending on when the animals come down. Two sites operate, run by two different families. The northern site near Fallana Gate is the one most international visitors see, and the Harari regional government lists the hyena feeding ritual near Fallana Gate among the area's signature experiences. The older site sits beside the shrine of Aw Ansar Ahmed, reached by leaving through Erer Gate and following the outside of the wall for roughly 300 meters. Travelers who have done both tend to describe the Erer side as quieter and the Fallana side as busier and easier to reach from most hotels.
Plan on 45 to 60 minutes on site plus transport. Because the feeding follows the animals rather than a clock, arriving 20 minutes early is more useful than arriving exactly on time: you watch the hyenas gather in the half-dark before anything is thrown.
Who is actually feeding them
These are not park rangers or performers brought in for tourists. They are a small number of local men from families that have held the role for decades. The best known is Abbas Yusuf, who learned the work from his father, Yusuf Mume Salleh, a man who fed the hyenas for 45 years before handing the job on. Abbas was still feeding nightly when international media covered him again in May 2026, and he is often described as one of Harar's last hyena men. He calls individual animals by name. Locals have another term for them altogether: in Harar the hyenas are sometimes called young priests, a reminder that this relationship carries a spiritual charge, not only a practical one.
What you will be asked to do
At the northern site you will typically see two to four hyenas come in close, though dozens more move through the city after dark. The feeder calls, tosses scraps, and demonstrates the mouth-feeding that made Harar famous on social media. Visitors are usually offered a stick with a piece of meat on the end and can hold it out themselves while the feeder stands beside them. Nobody sensible hands a first-time visitor meat to hold in their teeth, and you should be wary of anyone who offers.
Fees are informal and they move. Recent traveler reports put entry at several hundred birr, with some visitors describing a bundled city ticket closer to 35 US dollars, while older blog figures of 100 or 150 birr are badly out of date. Ethiopia shifted to a market-determined exchange rate in 2024, which made every pre-2024 birr price unreliable. Before you leave your hotel, ask two independent people what the current rate is, agree the amount per person in advance, and agree the bajaj fare separately, including whether the driver waits.
Show, Tradition, or Something in Between?
The origin stories do not fully agree, and that is part of what makes the practice interesting. The most repeated version places the beginning during a drought in the hills around Harar, when hungry hyenas came into town and took livestock and, in some accounts, people. Feeding them at the edge of the city became a way of keeping the peace. Other accounts push the relationship back before the wall was even built. Researchers who have worked in Harar, including anthropologist Marcus Baynes-Rock, recorded several versions of the story circulating in the same city, which suggests the practice is old enough to have grown more than one founding myth.
The older layer is religious. On the tenth day of Muharram, the night of Ashura, porridge is served to hyenas at shrines around Harar. Oral tradition holds that a white hyena leads the others to the food, and that how much they eat predicts the year ahead: nothing eaten means conflict, everything eaten means famine, most but not all eaten means a good year. That ritual has nothing to do with tourism.
The nightly paid version is more recent, generally traced to the 1960s, when feeding became a regular evening event that visitors could watch. So both readings hold. The bond between Harar and its hyenas is genuine and centuries old. The performance layer, the basket, the stick, the cameras, is a twentieth-century addition that now helps fund the tradition's survival.
There is also a practical reason the hyenas stay. Spotted hyenas work as the city's night cleaning crew, removing slaughterhouse waste and organic rubbish from the streets, and research on Ethiopian urban hyenas has estimated that they clear thousands of tonnes of organic waste a year. Harar is one of very few cities where a large predator lives at high density alongside people with so little conflict, and that is worth more than a photograph.
Safety, Etiquette, and What Visitors Get Wrong
How close is close enough
The animals are wild and habituated, which is not the same as tame. Abbas has said publicly that hyenas have not attacked Harar's people since his father began feeding them, unless someone harms a cub. That is the local view and it is broadly supported by how rarely incidents occur at the sites. It is not a guarantee. Harar has seen fatal hyena attacks on children in the past, and wildlife guidance for spotted hyenas in open country recommends keeping at least 20 meters.
In practice: sit or stand where the feeder puts you and do not close the gap for a better photo. Keep your hands at your sides when you are not holding the stick. Do not crouch or lie down, which puts you at hyena eye level. Do not scream or snatch the stick back; a startled animal reacts faster than you can move. Keep children beside you, not in front. If you feel uneasy, watch from the back row, which is a perfectly good view.
Photography
No flash. It disturbs the animals and produces the worst pictures of the night anyway. A phone in night mode will struggle; a camera that handles high ISO with a fast lens will do far better, and the exposure you want is the one where the hyenas' eyes catch the light. Ask before photographing the feeder or anyone else close up, do not block other visitors for a shot, and if you plan to publish, think about whether your framing turns a working tradition into a stunt.
Ethics and the small decisions that matter
Habituation is a real concern, and researchers have documented hyenas becoming bolder around people who get too familiar. You can keep your own footprint small: do not feed hyenas anywhere except the official sites, do not ask the feeder to place the stick in your mouth for a video, do not press for a more dramatic reaction, and do not chase animals for a second angle. If you book through an operator, notice whether they build in time for the old city and shrine etiquette or simply drop you at the site for 20 minutes. The first kind usually works with guides who actually live in Harar.
Dress as you would for a religious neighborhood, because that is what you are in. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off if you enter a shrine, no filming during prayer, and extra care during Ramadan.
Is Harar Worth the Detour?
Yes, if you are already in eastern Ethiopia, and the hyenas are not the main reason. Harar Jugol is a walled city of narrow lanes, 82 mosques, more than a hundred shrines and roughly 5,000 houses packed inside five historic gates. It is also a working market town, not a museum. The morning camel and livestock market outside the walls, the alleys around Shoa Gate, the coffee, and the house where Arthur Rimbaud lived while trading in the 1880s fill a day on their own.
Getting there: the nearest commercial airport is Dire Dawa, about an hour by road from Harar, and the drive from Addis Ababa is around 520 km, usually done as a long day or split with a stop. The city sits at roughly 1,885 meters, so evenings are cool and the climate is easier than the lowlands.
Time budget: one night covers the feeding, but two nights is the right answer. That gives you one evening with the hyenas, a full morning for the old city and markets, and a second evening to return with a better idea of what you are watching. Travelers adding Dire Dawa and the Valley of Marvels on the way back usually spend three nights in the region. October to February is the most comfortable window; the long rains from June to September slow some road sections.
As for whether this is a performance: watch the feeder call a hyena by name and you will see a relationship older than the ticket price. Watch the row of visitors with phones and you will see a business. Both are on display, and both deserve respect.
If you are building an eastern Ethiopia route and want the hyena feeding placed inside a properly sequenced itinerary, FindTourGuide connects travelers with local tour operators, letting you submit a trip request for free and receive itinerary options and quotes.
