Some have speculated that Nandi bears are in fact a misidentified hyena or a surviving Ice Age giant hyena: Karl Shuker states that a surviving short-faced hyaena Pachycrocuta brevirostris, extinct ca.
She narrowly escaped death in a close encounter with a lion (thinking the visitor one night was a hyaena, she left her tent to chase it off with a pail, realising her mistake too late to retreat: she was so close to the lion she could have touched it), and twice with charging rhinos that missed her by inches; she climbed two mountains (Ol Doinyo Orok and Longido); and she killed no animals except, at the request of the local Maasai, a man-eating lioness, shot by her askari.