[7] The largest remaining brown hyena population is located in the southern Kalahari Desert and coastal areas in Southwest Africa.

[6] Brown hyenas have powerful jaws, and young animals can crack the leg bones of springboks in five minutes, though this ability deteriorates with age and dental wear.

[13] The brown hyena inhabits desert areas, semi-desert, and open woodland savannahs in Southern Africa.

The brown hyena is not dependent on the ready availability of water sources for frequent drinking and favors rocky, mountainous areas, as these provide shade.

[15] Today, the brown hyena only inhabits Southern Africa, but in the past it lived also in the Iberian Peninsula and perhaps in other parts of Europe,[16] indicated by fossils found in the area of Granada from the Upper Pliocene.

[17] Early Pleistocene brown hyenas are known to have fed on hominins, though whether this constituted scavenging or active predation is unclear.

[20] There is the possibility that Parahyaena may be synonymous with the extinct Pachycrocuta, making the brown hyena the only extant member of this genus.

[9] Territories are marked by 'pasting',[23] during which the hyena deposits secretions from its large anal gland, which is located below the base of the tail and produces a black and white paste, on vegetation and boulders.

[9] Emigration is common in brown hyena clans, particularly among young males, which will join other groups upon reaching adulthood.

[27] In the Kalahari Desert, they are often the dominant mammalian carnivores present because of this behavior and the relative scarcity of lions, spotted hyenas, and packs of African wild dogs.

[7] Females give birth in dens, which are hidden in remote sand dunes far from the territories of spotted hyenas and lions.

Farmers find brown hyenas scavenging on livestock carcasses and wrongly assume that they have killed their property.

Educational campaigns are being utilized to promote awareness about hyenas and dispel prevailing myths, while problem individuals are removed from farmlands and urbanized areas.