Please don’t use photo software to make this photo look like some kind of monster.
Hippos are already monstrous enough. They kill more people in Africa than any other large mammal. They have what might be called a certain inherent antipathy towards us.
It is a good scientific question about why hippos hate people. I’d actually like to see a paper on this. Seriously.
***
Of course, Jessica the Hippo is an exception:
There was actually a full documentary on this. Jessica was an orphaned hippo who was taken in by this family. She imprinted strongly on people and bull terriers.
I never thought she was the best cared for animal. Her diet was mostly sweet potatoes, and her owners wanted to know why she was not big enough to start wanting to breed. After all, this family just needed an amorous bull hippo hanging by the door. I’m also sure that the needed a maternally protective hippo cow in the living room.
In the documentary, a bull did show up, but he was later killed after raiding some farms. Well, that’s nice.
I’ve never heard what happened to Jessica since the documentary, but my guess is what has happened to her hasn’t been very good. Hippos are poor pets.
***
Here’s a video of Jessica mothering some bull terrier puppies.
I think these bull terriers are going to have complexes!
Well, I don’t think hippos have it in for humans specifically–they will nail just about anything that they feel threatened by or that irritates them. Humans are so much slower and clumsier that they often get killed because they are unable to get out of the way in time! What often happens is when hippos go ashore at night to graze(they usually don’t during the day, because their skins are so sensitive to sunlight), and something gets between them and the water(their “safe” area), they panic and charge to get back to the water–overrunning and chomping anything in their way. And because they will graze miles inland at times, there’s no telling where the dang hippos are at night! Of course an ornery bull hippo will attack onshore or in the water for territorial(or pure cussedness) purposes…..
….and, incidentally, really nice, functional-looking, unexagerrated English Bull Terriers, I might add!
they also fed Jessica a quart or 2 of sweetened-tea or sweetened-coffee with cream, i forget which… DAILY —
either one was IMO a really stoopid idea, as a *treat*.
talk about empty-calories – ye gods.
she also broke their bed – TWICE – because U guessed it,
when she was an infant she was allowed to lie-there.
even after they reinforced the frame, it simply was not capable of withstanding a 9 to 12-MO Jessica flopping on it.
i thought when the doting human*parents* cooed over their
disappointment that their little-(hippo)-girl would not be
having kids of her own any time soon, they were nuts –
hippo-bulls are testy at best, and having one follow Jessica
into the front-yard, let alone the living-room, would have been a serious complication.
another generation of human-habituated 2-ton herbivores?
bad, bad, BAD idea… Jessica was too-much, herself.
humans are the weirdest species,
— terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF