> Hyenas are super cruel. It seems from many videos they take down beasts by biting off balls.

Chimps rip balls off, gouge eyes, etc. Snakes use venom. Some plants drown and dissolve their prey in acid. It's not a matter of "cruelty", it's a matter of the tools available to these animals.

> In yet other cases they just start eating the animal from before it's even dead.

There are animals/plants that eat their prey whole and dissolve them in acid. Ultimate goal of these animals is to eat, not to kill. What do you want the hyena to do?

> Very different from many cat family predators that usually kill their prey first.

Not because of some moral code. Because they don't want the prey attracting other predators. There are videos of cats eating live prey when it is convenient for them. A particular gruesome one is a pride of lions eating a live baby elephant.

There is no "cruelty" in nature. Only efficiency. These animals want to eat and do what they can with what they have.

Is it cruel for wasps to parasitically control insects, bugs, etc and lay eggs in them so that their eggs/larvae could feed on these hosts? A hyena is no more "cruel" than an earthquake is "cruel" for unleashing a tsunami that drowns thousands of people.

Only humans are cruel. Nature is simply nature.

Relax, I wasn't trying to make a moral argument. I was just saying that the suffering endured by those animals from a hyena seems much more than if they had been caught by many other similar-sized predators that tend to kill quickly.

It's also interesting that hyenas don't care to kill first, because another big reason to kill your prey as quickly as possible is that it stops fighting, and has less potential to injure you. If the hyena had gone for the neck first the animal would be down quickly and the hyena could eat in peace.

applying human concepts like 'cruelty' to an obligate carnivore that evolved that way is a weird idea.

this bird looks super cute, but...

https://www.audubon.org/news/shrikes-have-absolutely-brutal-...

I'm not trying to make a moral argument, I'm just saying that those that fall prey to hyenas suffer much more than if they had fallen prey to a number of other predators that tend to kill swiftly before eating (feline predators and snakes for example kill quickly; many birds also tend to kill on the first strike).

Hyenas don't bother killing, they just eat, and tend to start from non-vital organs, of all places, which is quite different from what most predators would do.

I'm no wildlife biologist but it seems that hyenas are not big enough to take down some of their prey by the neck (without high risk of injury to themselves, where a broken leg probably means certain death), so the evolutionary adaptation is to go for the soft underbelly. Undoubtedly the prey animals do feel pain and suffer.