COMMON HIPPOPOTAMUS Hippopotamus amphibius ©Laura Quick
Fun Facts:
Third largest land animal (after elephant and white rhino)
Considered amphibious animals, hippos spend up to 16 hours per day in the water.
Though hippos move easily through the water, they can't actually swim.
The hippopotamus is considered the world's deadliest large land mammal. These semiaquatic giants kill an estimated 500 people per year in Africa
Common noun for a group of hippos - schools, bloats, pods or sieges.
If food is scarce, hippos can store food in their stomachs and go up to three weeks without eating.
Adults eat about 80 lbs. (35 kg) of grass each night,traveling up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) in a night to get their fill. They also eat fruit that they find during their nightly scavenging
Long believed to be exclusively herbivorous, 2015 study published in the journal Mammal Review found that hippos occasionally feed on the carcasses of animals, including other hippos.
Drug lord Pablo Escobar kept hippos and other exotic animals on his estate. When Escobar was killed in 1993, the Colombian government seized his assets, including his menagerie. Most animals were transferred to zoos and aquariums, but his four hippos were left to fend for themselves. Those animals made their way into Colombia's waterways, where they multiplied. Today, between 40 and 60 of their descendants roam the landscape. source
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