Zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock claimed that reports of the Nandi bear were misidentified hyena, specifically the Spotted hyena. In 1932, the Natural History Museum stated that many reports of the Nandi Bear have "proved to have been nothing more than a spotted hyena." Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson attributed sightings of the Nandi bear to the honey badger or ratel. Simpson commented that the Nandi bear "turned out to be in most if not all cases a ratel, an animal which had been known to scientific zoologists since 1776."