One of the most popular wild animals amongst kids is the hippopotamus, and that’s because they learn to spell it with a song.
The hippopotamus is also known as the river hippopotamus or the common hippopotamus.
It is a large, semiaquatic mammal, mostly herbivorous and ungulate, native to the sub-Saharan African region.
It is one of two existing extant species that belong to the Hippopotamidae family, the other being the pygmy hippopotamus.
- Speed: 30 km/h (On Land, Running)
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Class: Mammalia
- Order: Artiodactyla
- Family: Hippopotamidae
- Genus: Hippopotamus
- Species: H. amphibius
- Trophic level: Omnivorous
- Lifespan: 40 – 50 years
- Diet: Herbivore
- Mass: Male: 1,500 – 1,800 kg (Adult), Female: 1,300 – 1,500 kg (Adult)
- Habitats: River, Lake, Swamp
Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), also known as hippo or water horse, is an amphibious African ungulate mammal. Hippopotamuses are Often considered the world’s second-largest land animal (only after the elephant).
One can compare the hippopotamus in weight and size to the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and the white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum).
Hippopotamus is the Greek word for “river horse,” the mammal has been known since ancient times. Hippopotamuses are often spotted basking on the banks or even sleeping in the waters of lakes, rivers, and swamps close to grasslands.
Because of this mammal’s enormous size and aquatic habits, they are often safe from most predators. However, human beings have been the main predator as they have long valued their meat, hide, and ivory.
Humans may also attack hippopotamuses for ruining crops. History has it that they once ranged over the whole of the African continent and beyond, but hippos now live in central, eastern, and some parts of southern Africa.
Characteristics
The hippopotamus is the world’s second-largest land animal, and it has an enormous head, a bulky body on stumpy legs, a short tail, and four toes on individual feet.
Each hippo toe features a nail-like hoof. Male hippos are usually 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) long, stand 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, and weigh 3.5 tons (3,200 kg). Regarding physical size, the male hippos are the larger sex, as they weigh around 30 percent more than females.
The hippo skin is quite valuable to poachers as they come about 5 cm (2 inches) thick on the flanks but become thinner everywhere and almost entirely hairless. Hippos have a grayish-brown color with pinkish underparts.
A hippo’s mouth is half a meter wide and can also gape 150° to reveal the teeth. Hippos have sharp lower canines that may exceed 12 inches (30 cm).
Hippos may be land mammals but are well adapted to life in the waters. These animals’ eyes, ears, and nostrils are located quite high on the head, so the rest of their body can remain submerged while they have their facial features above water.
The ears and nostrils can easily be folded shut to prevent water from entering their bodies through those openings. The body of a hippo is so dense that it can walk underwater, where they can hold their breath for as much as five minutes.
Although they are often seen basking in the sun, hippos are designed to lose water rapidly through their skin and become dehydrated without a periodic dip.
They must also get into the water often to keep cool as they do not sweat. Several skin glands release an oily pinkish or reddish “lotion,” responsible for the ancient myth that hippopotamuses sweat blood.
This unique pigment acts as a natural sunblock to filter out ultraviolet radiation.
Behavior
Hippos love to live in shallow areas where they can enjoy a sound sleep half-submerged (also called “rafting”). This nature-imposed “day living space” significantly limits their populations, which may become very crowded.
You can find as many as 150 hippos using one pool during the dry season. In times of famine or drought, they may carry out an overland migration that often leads to the death of many hippos.
By night, hippos travel along familiar paths to distances as far as 6 miles (10 km) into surrounding grasslands, where they feed for five to six hours.
Hippos have long canines and incisors, mainly used as weapons; grazing is primarily accomplished by holding grass with the massive full lips and then jerking the head.
Close to the river, where hippo grazing and trampling are most common, large areas may be stripped of all grass, eventually resulting in erosion. However, hippos naturally eat relatively little vegetation for their huge body size (about 35 kg per night).
This is so because they have shallow energy requirements and are buoyed in warm water often. Hippos are not ruminant animals, so they do not chew the cud.
Nevertheless, they can retain food in the stomach for a long time, during which fermentation will extract protein.
Their digestive process is beneficial to nature as it cycles a tremendous amount of nutrients into the rivers and lakes of Africa and supports the fish, an essential protein source in the diet of the people around and beyond.
Reproduction and Life Cycle
Female hippos are called cows, and they become sexually mature from ages 7 and 15 in the wild. For the male hippos, they mature slightly earlier, between the ages of 6 and 13.
However, in captivity, male and female hippos may become sexually mature as young as ages 3 and 4. However, dominant bulls over 20 years old are known to initiate most of the mating.
Bulls are known to monopolize select areas in the river or lake as mating territories for a decade or longer. Subordinate males are sometimes tolerated, especially if they do not try to breed.
Cows around will aggregate in these places during the dry season, which is the period when most mating occurs. There may be a rare eruption of battles when strange bulls invade already-defended territories in the mating season.
Most hippo aggression is splash, noise, bluff charges, and a scary yawning display of sharp teeth. However, opponents may engage in fierce combat in intense cases by slashing upward at the other hippo’s flank with the lower incisors.
Though the skin in that area is thick, wounds can be fatal. Adjacent territorial bulls are known to stare at each other, then gradually turn, and, with their rear end out of the river, flip urine and feces in a wide arc by quickly wagging their tail.
This is a routine display that indicates that a territory is occupied. Subordinate and territorial males make dung piles along pathways that lead inland, possibly olfactory signposts (scent markers) during the night.
Hippos can recognize individuals by scent and sometimes follow others nose-to-tail during their night treks.
Fertilization
Fertilization usually results in a single calf that weighs about 45 kg (99 pounds), and the calf will be born after an eight-month gestation period.
The calf can close its ears and nostrils when it needs to nurse underwater. When resting, a calf may climb onto its mother’s back above the water.
It starts to eat grass by the first month and is eventually weaned between six and eight months of age. Hippo cows can produce young every two years.
Young calves may not be so small, but they are vulnerable to predators like lions, crocodiles, and hyenas. It is thought that hippo attacks on small boats are only antipredator behavior, as the hippos may mistake the boats for crocodiles.
For this reason, hippos have long had a disturbing and undeserved reputation as aggressive creatures. Cows have a strong bond as they live in “schools,” but they do not have any permanent association with other cows.
However, they sometimes maintain close relationships with their offspring for some years. The longevity of hippos in captivity is up to 61 years, but rarely above 40 for those in the wild.
Distribution of hippos
Trampling and crop destruction by hippos led to determined and early efforts to exterminate them for good; their meat and hides were also much valued.
Hippos were everywhere in Africa, but they became extinct in northern Africa by the early 1800s and slowly vanished from south of Natal and the Transvaal by 1900.
They are still reasonably popular in East Africa, but there is no doubt that their populations continue to decrease throughout the continent.
There remains a high demand for hippo teeth as it is a fine-grained “ivory” that can be carved easily; it was also used to make false teeth once upon a time.
After the international elephant ivory in 1989 went into effect, hunting pressure on Hippopotamuses increased, and the hippo populations rapidly declined.
A population assessment that was carried out in 2008 estimated that around 126,000 and 149,000 hippos were left.
Pygmy Hippopotamus
There is a rare pygmy hippopotamus (Hexaprotodon liberiensis or Choeropsis liberiensis), the other living species of the family known as Hippopotamidae.
This hippo is around the size of a domestic pig. While the giant hippo is more of an aquatic mammal, the pygmy hippo is less aquatic but can commonly hide in the water when pursued.
Less gregarious, it is often seen alone or with no more than one or two of its kind in the lowland tropical forests of Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and swamps, streams, and wet forests.
Liberians are known to call it a “water cow.” It feeds on some grasses, fallen fruits, fresh leaves of bushes and trees, and herbs.
The pygmy hippopotamus has been classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature since 2006.
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