9 Things About the Hippopotamus
- Up to 89% of the average hippopotamus is pure blubber; the remaining 32.5% is bone, muscle, teeth and innards.
2. Obesity is a leading cause of hippo mortality; in the Classical era, hippos had a profile more akin to the mountain goat, but contemporary hippos have poor diet and even worse willpower.
3. They are descended from blue whales originally transported from the Antarctic to Lake Victoria in the middle of the African continent about 90 million years ago, by what scientists believe to have been a freak wave.
4. Hippo skin is used widely by the cosmetics industry; for what, nobody will say.
5. Recent research has shown that hippopotamuses have a complex communication system, one that relies on line of sight. They use their cutesy little ears for signifying gender, verb tense and number; their mouths to indicate adjectives, prepositions and subject; and — astonishingly — their back left foot to tap out the object form of the message. Or so we understand; scientists are only now beginning to unravel this complex mode of communication.
6. Based on artwork inscribed on several clay pots recovered from archaeological digs in Africa, it is postulated that hippos used to keep the larger cats as pets. Lions were favoured, if their present-day proximity to the hippos is anything to judge by.
7. Dentists are unanimous in concluding that hippo toothache is the greatest pain known to any creature alive today. Even childbirth or a man stubbing his toe doesn’t match.
8. The hippo’s incredibly strong skeletal structure theoretically allows it to descend to the ocean floor and walk there — in fact, the name hippopotamus comes from ancient Greek and means ‘the animal who walks on the bottom of the sea’ but the high blubber content of modern hippos makes them float in water and prevents them walking beneath water.
9. Hippos actually come in a variety of bright colours, but early photographs showed them as grey, leading to a preference amongst zookeepers and safari custodians for the ‘classic lead-grey’ hippo.
