Columbus Zoo Wilds Baby Giraffe Death in September 2018
Facts about hippos
Hippopotamuses (Hippopotamus amphibius) are large, round, water-loving animals that are native to Africa. The word "hippopotamus" comes from the Greek word for "water equus caballus" or "river horse," although hippos and horses aren't closely related. The closest living relatives to hippos are pigs, whales and dolphins, according to the San Diego Zoo.
Size
Common hippos, as well known as river hippos, are very rotund animals and are the third largest living land mammals, later on elephants and white rhinos, co-ordinate to the African Wild fauna Foundation. They grow to betwixt x.8 and 16.v feet (three.three and five meters) long and up to 5.2 feet (one.6 m) tall at the shoulder. The boilerplate female weighs around 3,000 lbs. (1,400 kilograms), while males weigh 3,500 to 9,920 lbs. (i,600 to 4,500 kg), co-ordinate to the San Diego Zoo.
These enormous animals are related to the much smaller and rarer pygmy hippo (Choeropsis liberiensis), which just grows to be 2.v to three.2 feet (0.75 to 1 m) tall and about v to 6 feet (ane.5 to 1.75 chiliad) long, according to the San Diego Zoo. Pygmy hippos can weigh between 350 and 600 lbs. (160 and 270 kg).
Habitat and behavior
Common hippos alive in sub-Saharan Africa. They alive in areas with abundant water, every bit they spend most of their time submerged to go along their skin cool and moist. Considered amphibious animals, hippos spend up to 16 hours per day in the water, co-ordinate to National Geographic.
Hippos are social beasts, hanging out in groups called schools, bloats, pods or sieges. Schools of hippos ordinarily consist of ten to 30 members, including both females and males, although some groups take equally many as 200 individuals. No affair the size, the schoolhouse is usually led by a dominant male, according to the San Diego Zoo.
Hippos are loud animals. Their snorts, grumbles and wheezes accept been measured at 115 decibels, according to the San Diego Zoo — almost the same volume you'd hear when fifteen feet (4.6 m) from the speakers at a rock concert. The animals' signature dissonance, called the "wheeze honk," can exist heard from more than than half a mile (1 kilometer) abroad, Alive Science previously reported. These booming creatures also use subsonic vocalizations to communicate.
Hippos are ambitious and are considered very unsafe. They accept big teeth and tusks that they apply for fighting off threats, including humans. Sometimes, their young fall victim to developed hippos' tempers. During a fight betwixt ii adults, a young hippo defenseless in the middle can exist seriously hurt or fifty-fifty crushed, according to PBS.
Though hippos movement easily through the water, they tin can't actually swim. According to the San Diego Zoo, these animals glide through the water by pushing themselves off other objects. And they tin stay underwater for upwards to 5 minutes without coming up for air, co-ordinate to National Geographic.
Hungry, hungry hippos
Hippos take a healthy and mostly herbivorous appetite. Adults eat about eighty lbs. (35 kg) of grass each night, traveling up to 6 miles (x km) in a dark to get their make full. They as well consume fruit that they find during their nightly scavenging, according to National Geographic. If food is scarce, hippos can store food in their stomachs and go up to three weeks without eating.
Although hippos were long believed to exist exclusively herbivorous, in a 2015 study published in the journal Mammal Review, scientists reported that hippos occasionally feed on the carcasses of animals, including other hippos.
Baby hippos
Female hippos take a gestation menses of viii months and have only one baby at a time, co-ordinate to the San Diego Zoo. At birth, the calf weighs between l and 110 lbs. (23 and fifty kg). For its first 8 months, the dogie nurses while its mother is on land, or it swims underwater to suckle. When information technology dives, the calf closes its nose and ears to block out water. All hippos have this power. Hippos as well have membranes that encompass and protect their eyes while they are underwater.
At 5 to 7 years erstwhile, a hippo calf is fully mature, co-ordinate to the San Diego Zoo. The average life span of a hippo in the wild or in captivity can range from about xl to 61, co-ordinate to the University of Michigan's Animal Multifariousness Web.
Related: What beast has the longest pregnancy?
Attacks on humans
The hippopotamus is considered the world's deadliest large state mammal. These semiaquatic giants kill an estimated 500 people per year in Africa, according to the BBC. Hippos are highly aggressive and are well-equipped to deliver considerable damage to anything that wanders into their territory.
For example, in 2014, a hippo attacked a minor, unsuspecting boat filled with Nigerian schoolhouse children, killing 12 students and one teacher on board, ABC News reported. Conflicts between humans and hippos also occur when hippos wander onto land in search of food.
Conservation status
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the common hippo isn't endangered, but it is vulnerable to extinction. The IUCN estimates that between 115,000 and 130,000 common hippos remain in the wild. Poaching and habitat loss reduced the hippo'southward global numbers during the belatedly 1990s and early 2000s, but the population has since plateaued thank you to stricter law enforcement, co-ordinate to the IUCN.
Invasive hippos
Notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar famously kept hippos, giraffes, elephants and other exotic animals on his estate in northwestern Colombia. When Escobar was killed in 1993, the Colombian government seized all of his assets, including his menagerie. Most of his animals were transferred to zoos and aquariums, but his four hippos were left to fend for themselves. Those four animals made their way into Colombia'due south waterways, where they multiplied.
An estimated 80 hippos now inhabit the river networks near Medellín, Colombia, where Escobar's Hacienda Nápoles estate was located, Live Science reported in October 2021. Wildlife officials in Colombia began sterilizing the hippos in 2021, because this invasive population poses a threat to the community, in that the massive beasts occasionally trample crops and charge at humans. The hippos also threaten native wildlife populations and their presence degrades the local ecosystem, as each individual hippo gobbles downwardly dozens of pounds of vegetation a night and generates formidable quantities of poop.
Nonetheless, many Colombians have grown fond of the uninvited ungulates and vehemently oppose their removal. Some scientists, though, fear that the animals' continued presence could take unintended consequences. "The hazard to native species — such every bit manatees, turtles and fish — is high, and the environmental issue is unpredictable," Nelson Aranguren-Riaño, biologist at Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia, said in a argument.
Boosted resource and readings
- Did you know hippos are covered in mucus? Larn more with SciShow Kids.
- Learn about the "The 'Beauty' Regime of Hippos" with BBC Earth.
- Bank check out the volume Saving Fiona: The Story of the World'south Near Famous Baby Hippo.
Bibliography
AFP. (2014, November 19). Thirteen people, including 12 children, killed in Hippopotamus attack. ABC News. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.abc.cyberspace.au/news/2014-11-20/hippopotamus-attack-kills-thirteen-in-boat-in-niger/5904646
African Wild fauna Foundation. (n.d.). Hippopotamus. African Wild animals Foundation. Retrieved February iv, 2022, from https://www.awf.org/wild fauna-conservation/hippopotamus
BBC. (2016, June fifteen). What are the world'southward deadliest animals? BBC News. Retrieved February iv, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-36320744
Dudley, J. P., Hang'Ombe, B. M., Leendertz, F. H., Dorward, Fifty. J., Castro, J., Subalusky, A. L., & Clauss, Grand. (2015). Carnivory in the common hippopotamus Hippopotamus amphibius: implications for the ecology and epidemiology of anthrax in African landscapes. Mammal Review, 46(3), 191–203. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12056
IUCN. (n.d.). Hippopotamus. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Retrieved Feb 4, 2022, from http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/10103/0
National Geographic. (n.d.). Hippopotamus: National Geographic. National Geographic. Retrieved Feb four, 2022, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/hippopotamus
Public Broadcasting Service. (2020, July 9). Hippo fact canvas. PBS. Retrieved February 11, 2022, from https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/hippo-fact-sheet/
San Diego Zoo. (northward.d.). Hippo. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Animals and Plants. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/hippo
San Diego Zoo. (northward.d.). Pygmy hippopotamus. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Animals and Plants. Retrieved February four, 2022, from https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/pygmy-hippopotamus
UC San Diego. (2018, Apr 26). A drug lord and the world'south largest invasive animal. UC San Diego News Center. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/characteristic/a-drug-lord-and-the-worlds-largest-invasive-animal
This article was last updated on February. 14, 2022 by Alive Scientific discipline staff writer Nicoletta Lanese. Live Science correspondent Annie Roth as well contributed reporting.
Originally published on Alive Science.
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