KFAR TOUN, Lebanon — Close to midnight, Mounir Abi-Said sat on the roof of his bright yellow Land Rover and shined a spotlight across the landscape, looking for striped hyenas. Warm fog swirled in the headlights. A bat detector crackled as it picked up sonar. Some years ago, when Dr. Abi-Said, a conservation biologist and striped hyena expert at Lebanese University in Beirut, was conducting his Ph.D. research, he developed a trap that, in the dead of night, as he waited alone in his tent, caused a dangling red light to shake and swing when a hyena was caught. “It looked really very scary,” he said.

Dr. Abi-Said’s hyena-spotting mission had brought him and three assistants to the outskirts of Kfar Toun, a village 40 minutes from the Syrian border. His spotlight illuminated the eyes of spiders, foxes and a small owl. Then, early in the morning as he rumbled along in a valley between two steep mountain ridges , the spotlight lit up two pairs of — could it be? — hyena eyes. But they closed straightaway and did not reappear.

The striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) is Lebanon’s national animal. Smaller than the spotted hyena of sub-Saharan Africa, it has a prominent black and white mane that, when raised in alarm, gives it the appearance of having been electrocuted while trying to transform into a zebra. The striped hyena is an important part of the ecosystem: a scavenger, equipped with a formidable immune system that enables it to safely consume rotting meat and prevent the spread of disease.

But striped hyenas are elusive, understudied and not exactly well liked. In Lebanon they are shot on sight, out of fear, or hunted for sport, although both activities are illegal. In North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East, where striped hyenas also roam, the animals are run over, poisoned or killed for use in traditional medicine.