A Few Notes About Our Namesake
An enormous, amphibious mammal with smooth, naked skin. Inflated-looking body supported on short, relatively thin legs. The male can weigh up to 8,000 pounds and reach 66 inches in height. The head has a huge muzzle and little ears placed high on head. A Hippo’s teeth are enlarged as tusks with lower pairs of canines reaching 20 inches in length. The tail is a short, stubby paddle with flattened sides.
Hippos live everywhere south of the Sahara where adequate water and grazing occur. Largely confined now to protected areas but still survives in many major rivers and swamps. Hippos need water deep enough to cover them, within commuting distance of pasture. They must submerge because their thin, naked skin is vulnerable to overheating and dehydration. They avoid rapids, preferring gently sloping, firm bottom where herds can rest half-submerged and calves can nurse without swimming. At densities up to 81 hippos/mi square, the hippo’s local environmental impact is second only to elephant’s. A grazer, it eats about 88 lb of preferably short grass nightly, mowing a 20 inch swath with its muscular lips.
Hippos walk up to 6 miles during nightly foraging; after 5 hours of intensive grazing, hippos return to water beds before dawn to spend the day digesting and socializing. Paths from water to pastures start as broad highways but branch into inconspicuous secondary and tertiary tracks within a mile or two. In the water or resting ashore, hippos tolerate even closer contact than pigs, regularly using neighbors as head rests. But on emerging at dusk, they disperse one by one to communal pastures.
The water part of the homeland is partitioned into individual mating territories by mature bulls (over 20 years old), which defend from 50 to 100 yard sections of a river. Known individuals have held the same property for 4 years in rivers and at least 8 years in lakes. Herds typically number 10 to 15 hippos, but vary from 2 to 50 and up to 200 or more at highest density. Non-breeding males are tolerated in the territories and even among the cows, as long as they behave themselves. But frequent savage attacks persuade some males to live in bachelor herds or alone in marginal habitat.
More agile than it looks…the top speed of a Hippo is about 18 miles per hour (30 kph) and half that speed in a trot. A Hippo turns on a dime, climbs steep banks, but is unable to jump and won’t even step over obstacles. Seen underwater, hippos cross-walking on the bottom levitate like moonwalkers; their swimming movement is a gallop. As a hippo submerges, you can see its nostrils close and its ears fold into recesses and upon resurfacing, the nostrils open as the hippo exhales and the ears spring erect. Sleeping hippos rise to breathe, resurfacing as automatically as breathing itself.
Unprotected calves may become meals for lions, hyenas, and crocodiles. Staying close to mother is good security since hippo jaws are capable of biting a 10-foot crocodile in two. Trampling is probably the main danger to calves, during fights, chases, and stampedes and usually involving bulls. Mothers will mob bulls that create a disturbance in their midst.
Dung-showering is the method of choice in establishing “who’s who” among Hippos. Mutual dung-showering in the water, frequent at territorial boundary markings, sees males approach and stare at one another, then turn tail, elevate rumps, and let fly.
The sound a Hippo makes has been described as “wheeze-honking”. Vocal advertising, probably not limited to territorial males, consists of resonant grunts and wheezes that make Hippo’s among noisiest animals.
