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Speaker 4: Oh hey, it's the fish soup that you spilled all
Speaker 4: over the kitchen, which actually did happen to me? Hallie Ward,
Speaker 4: And this is Ologies. It's a podcast where we explore
Speaker 4: an ology a week. So you are tuning into a
Speaker 4: chat about hippos. It will leave you changed. It changed me.
Speaker 4: We've got a true hippopotomologist, a professor of biology at
Speaker 4: San Diego State University whose research at Vassar and UC
Speaker 4: Davis focused on vulnerable wildlife populations and conservation and of
Speaker 4: course hippos, so they know way more about hippos than
Speaker 4: most people ever will on the planet. And they're in
Speaker 4: a very elite club of hippopotomologists. And I asked her
Speaker 4: all of my very not smart questions as well as yours.
Speaker 4: If you want to submit a question ahead of time
Speaker 4: before we record, you can become a patron at Patreon
Speaker 4: dot com slash Ologies. It costs about twenty five cents
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Speaker 4: you can support for no dollars by leaving us a review,
Speaker 4: which helps convince me that I'm not broadcasting to an
Speaker 4: assortment of dolls in a basement. And I read all
Speaker 4: your reviews such as this one from Chris F, who writes,
Speaker 4: even if I wear a many legged insect, I still
Speaker 4: wouldn't have enough appendedist to count all the times I've
Speaker 4: thrown a Did you know this bizarre and uniquely entertaining
Speaker 4: fact about x y or z at an unsuspecting friend
Speaker 4: since I started listening to this podcast, Three cheers to you,
Speaker 4: Weird podcast Dad, Chris F, and all my stuffed animals
Speaker 4: listening out there. Thank you for letting me fother you. Okay, hippos, hippos,
Speaker 4: you might know. You probably know that hippopotamus in Latin
Speaker 4: it means river horse. If you didn't know that, I'm
Speaker 4: going to give you a second. It's hippo means horse,
Speaker 4: Potamus means of the river. Hippopotamus river horse. These beasts,
Speaker 4: they are artidactyls, meaning that they have an even number
Speaker 4: of toes, like a bison or a deer in a giraffe,
Speaker 4: those are all in artidactyls, and after elephants and rhinos,
Speaker 4: hippos are the largest land mammal. Even though the common
Speaker 4: hippo's scientific name is hippopotamus amphibious terrestrial animal. We'll get
Speaker 4: into it. Soot weird little ears are a way to
Speaker 4: learn about knife teeth, blood, sweat, swamp hippos, pet hippos, subspecies,
Speaker 4: their daily diet, the current state of hippo conservation, the
Speaker 4: absolute chaotic affection we have for mudang. How many people
Speaker 4: hippos kill a year? For real? If you need to
Speaker 4: apologize to a hippo, Who are hippo's best friends? Their
Speaker 4: role as ecosystem engineers, if you have ever been brainwashed
Speaker 4: about a hippo, what's up with their nostrils? How to
Speaker 4: keep a hippo in your pocket? And tips on flattering
Speaker 4: your friends into planning a group vacation with conservation biologists.
Speaker 4: Professor and actual real life hippopotomologist, doctor Rebecca Lewison.
Speaker 5: I'm Rebecca Lewison and she her.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for doing this. As someone who
Speaker 4: studies hippos, this is a busy time of life for you,
Speaker 4: and we will get to why how long have hippos
Speaker 4: been part of your bread and butter?
Speaker 5: I started studying hippos as a graduate student. I was
Speaker 5: at UC Davis doing my PhD in ecology, and I
Speaker 5: kind of stumbled into this project to work on hippos.
Speaker 5: My interest was to study behavioral ecology.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 5: I just really loved it. Was fascinated by sort of
Speaker 5: the minutia of animal behavior, and I thought, oh, this
Speaker 5: will be perfect. I'll study hippos, which anyone who actually
Speaker 5: studies behavior will be laughing when they hear this, because
Speaker 5: you think, like, no, no, no, no, you study behavior
Speaker 5: on small things like birds or squirrels, not hippos.
Speaker 4: Not her. She dedicated her research to a notoriously challenging
Speaker 4: terrestrial spech what the hell happened?
Speaker 5: But I had this opportunity because I had spent time
Speaker 5: in Kenya as an undergrad and so could speak some
Speaker 5: Swahili and had traveled around and just had a fair
Speaker 5: amount of field experience. And so I got this amazing
Speaker 5: opportunity and kind of just fell into it and didn't
Speaker 5: realize what I was getting into at the time, and
Speaker 5: sort of entering this amazing world of this understeadied animal.
Speaker 4: So it might be easier to see the behavior of
Speaker 4: like spiders if they're living in the lab and stuff.
Speaker 5: Exactly, you can't study it in the lab. You can't
Speaker 5: manipulate it at all. They're actually really hard to study,
Speaker 5: period because they spend almost all their time in the water,
Speaker 5: Like you couldn't pick something less studiable if you tried.
Speaker 4: You know, pop culturally, there's no lack of hippos.
Speaker 5: Who didn't play Hungry Hungry Hippo as.
Speaker 4: A kid, Oh it was Hungry Hungry Hippo. Whoever gobbles
Speaker 4: under host marbles where I played it all the time?
Speaker 4: They don't even eat marbles in real life.
Speaker 3: Right, they definitely don't.
Speaker 4: What are they eating? Are they eating mostly plants?
Speaker 5: They are eating mostly plants, so they are herbivores. They
Speaker 5: eat grass, so we can be a little bit more
Speaker 5: specific than that. They're basically like lawnmowers. They eat a
Speaker 5: tremendous amount of grass, and it has to be pretty
Speaker 5: short grass. Why well, because it's just wait until we
Speaker 5: unpack this. Like, hippos are amazing head to tail, but
Speaker 5: they don't really have a neck. They don't really have
Speaker 5: any structures in the back of that part of their spine,
Speaker 5: so they can't really lift their heads up like when
Speaker 5: you think of like giraffes or elephants. They can't do that,
Speaker 5: so they're really limited by the grass height.
Speaker 4: No neck. Hippos are necklace and so are they foraging
Speaker 4: grasses on the banks of rivers or are they coming
Speaker 4: up on land.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's a great question, and it's a little bit
Speaker 5: of a Yes, they do forage on the banks. But
Speaker 5: what you'll see if you're in a place where there
Speaker 5: are a lot of hippos is you really know a
Speaker 5: lot about where hippos are going because they have these
Speaker 5: trails and you can look down on the trail and
Speaker 5: see like a hippoprint, another hippoprint. So they just follow
Speaker 5: these trails for a really long time. So they're really
Speaker 5: well established to what we call grazing lawns, so areas
Speaker 5: of short grass that are some distance away from usually
Speaker 5: the water where they're in.
Speaker 4: So they have stomped down a little highway that leads
Speaker 4: to a food court of short grass. It's like a
Speaker 4: free buffet, but it only serves short grass. If hippos
Speaker 4: are like the size of a car or a small
Speaker 4: car and they're eating just a very particular kind of
Speaker 4: grass down a long trail, how are they getting enough
Speaker 4: calories to have so much cake, to have such a
Speaker 4: dump trucks?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's crazy. We think they eat somewhere between like
Speaker 5: maybe fifty to one hundred pounds. We don't one hundred
Speaker 5: percent know, because it's hard to tell, and obviously in
Speaker 5: captivity their diet is much better. They you'll see them
Speaker 5: like eating the watermelon or pumpkins, you know if you've
Speaker 5: seen the videos. So they're not necessarily super particular on
Speaker 5: the species of grass, just the height of the grass.
Speaker 5: So I think these grazing lawns are there because of them,
Speaker 5: and they continue to get mowed down by hippos, and
Speaker 5: they're pretty long lived, so I'm sure they have a
Speaker 5: lot of information that they store. And if you want
Speaker 5: to study, like if you were a gradual student and
Speaker 5: you were captivated by forging behavior, that's what you do.
Speaker 5: You'd follow the paths, you'd sit in a vehicle and
Speaker 5: you'd get some crude nightscope and you'd watch them for
Speaker 5: hours and hours and hours. And that's basically what I did.
Speaker 4: Are they nocturnal?
Speaker 5: Yes, what they only come out of the water at night?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 5: And we think that's because of thermoregulation, right, they're adapted
Speaker 5: to be in the water. They don't do well if
Speaker 5: there isn't standing water, and they'll die without that. So
Speaker 5: in the dry season and so for most of the
Speaker 5: year they are only coming out of the water. You
Speaker 5: know when it's dusk and getting dark. So yeah, what
Speaker 5: I would do is sit. I would drive my land
Speaker 5: rover to the place where that foraging one was and
Speaker 5: then I would sit on the roof with a pretty
Speaker 5: old school nightscope and watch them forage. That was That's
Speaker 5: what I did for about a year.
Speaker 4: When would you sleep? Would you sleep during the day?
Speaker 5: I have some crazy stories of falling asleep and like
Speaker 5: waking up to elephants at my eye level because I
Speaker 5: would fall asleep. Like you said, I wasn't getting enough sleep.
Speaker 5: But yes, I would sleep during the day and try
Speaker 5: to stay up. And I would have to do it
Speaker 5: when there was some full moon because it was really crude.
Speaker 5: It was, you know, mid nineties, so we had nightscopes,
Speaker 5: but nothing like we do now.
Speaker 4: What happens if you're asleep on top of a land
Speaker 4: rover watching hippos and a elephant wakes you up, It's
Speaker 4: a good question.
Speaker 5: The incredible thing is what I remember doing is picking
Speaker 5: my head up and I'm literally at eye level because
Speaker 5: I was on the top of this pickup truck and
Speaker 5: I literally just picked my head up. I saw an
Speaker 5: elephant and I was so tired. I just put my
Speaker 5: head down and went back to sleep.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, did you think you were dreaming for one second?
Speaker 5: I think I woke up in the morning and I
Speaker 5: definitely was like, what, oh, you know for people who
Speaker 5: work in the field, and yeah, obviously I was careful
Speaker 5: and you know, followed all the protocols I was supposed
Speaker 5: to follow. But amazing things happen.
Speaker 4: Just a normal day on the job for a hippoecologist.
Speaker 4: So you're absolutely in a Safari park of life, or
Speaker 4: you're surrounded by something that sounds like a fever dream.
Speaker 4: What are you doing when you're watching them at night?
Speaker 4: Are you taking notes like this one went and did
Speaker 4: a poop on this one or this one seems to
Speaker 4: be crying.
Speaker 5: I know it's so I'm going to say it out
Speaker 5: loud and then people are going to think, like what
Speaker 5: scientists do?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 5: But I was actually counting the number of bites and steps.
Speaker 5: I know, I say it out loud and I just
Speaker 5: think what And it does sound like my nusha to
Speaker 5: me too, But it's fascinating, like we know what we do.
Speaker 5: What do hippos do? How far do they go? Can
Speaker 5: they just go anywhere? Like you were asking those questions initially,
Speaker 5: so I spent all this time trying to understand sort
Speaker 5: of their their strategy. How do they make it work,
Speaker 5: how do they get enough, how do they decide where
Speaker 5: to go? And how do you make choices about where
Speaker 5: to forage?
Speaker 4: And so when we see hippos and zoos, they are
Speaker 4: opening their gaping moss and a whole pumpkin goes in.
Speaker 4: But do they have that kind of experience ever in
Speaker 4: the wild?
Speaker 3: They don't.
Speaker 5: Hippos in captivity. You know, all the accredited places that
Speaker 5: hippos are living takes amazing care of the animals. They
Speaker 5: give them lettuce and pumpkins and watermelon and amazing things,
Speaker 5: and very very well fed. But no, nothing like that
Speaker 5: happens to hippos in the wild.
Speaker 4: How long do they live? You said they live a
Speaker 4: long time?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think they live around thirty to forty years
Speaker 5: in the wild, and in captivity they can live quite
Speaker 5: a bit longer.
Speaker 4: And okay, there are horses of the river right, like
Speaker 4: water horses. Yes, how are they extracting calories from a
Speaker 4: bunch of grass? Do they have stomachs like hippos? I
Speaker 4: mean stomachs like horses.
Speaker 3: Hippos, You're never gonna leave this.
Speaker 5: Hippos have stomachs like hippos. Okay, so memory said they
Speaker 5: are incredible head to toe, so they have incredible stomachs.
Speaker 5: So anyone who's like fascinated by stomachs, they's not going
Speaker 5: to be a very large slice of listeners. But out
Speaker 5: there they have all this interesting stomach structures that actually
Speaker 5: is similar to what cows have. They are not ruminants,
Speaker 5: but they do have this like blind sack. They have
Speaker 5: like this three chambered stomach, but they do something similar
Speaker 5: to ruminants, so they don't have like cud, but they
Speaker 5: keep things in their stomach a really long time. And
Speaker 5: I think that gets to your question more than elephants
Speaker 5: are like conveyor bils. It goes in and it goes out.
Speaker 5: And if you see an elephant poop, I don't know
Speaker 5: who has, but you'll notice like, oh, I know what
Speaker 5: that is. It looks just like what they just took in.
Speaker 5: But for hippos not so. So it really breaks down
Speaker 5: a lot so that this three chambered stomach has this
Speaker 5: ability to extract resources. So even though fifty to one
Speaker 5: hundred pounds sounds a lot, for wild hippos, like you said,
Speaker 5: they're size of a VW bus. And so they're using
Speaker 5: this three chambered stomach structure to extract all the nutrients
Speaker 5: and keep things in their stomach kind of a long time.
Speaker 4: So if you're a hippo doing your thing, it's say
Speaker 4: a Thursday, and you're eating an average of seventy five
Speaker 4: pounds of mode grass, which is about two huge garbage
Speaker 4: bags full of lawn clippings per day. So much salad.
Speaker 4: Your favorite dressing, I guess is mud. There's no croutons.
Speaker 4: Maybe you got some accidental worms in there, but you're
Speaker 4: eating dirt grass. It's the breakfast of champions. It's the
Speaker 4: lunch of champions. It's the dinner of champions. How many
Speaker 4: pounds are we talking of hippo.
Speaker 5: So they're about like twenty five hundred to three thousand
Speaker 5: pounds in the wild.
Speaker 4: In the wild, and then pigmy hippos, by contrast, pigmy.
Speaker 5: Hippos, by contrast, are about four hundred to four fifty.
Speaker 4: So there are only two species of hippopotamuses or hippopotami.
Speaker 4: Either word is legit and fine. I thought there were
Speaker 4: maybe ten species of hippopotamus, but they're two. The common
Speaker 4: big ass hippo that you're used to is a hippopotamus amphibious.
Speaker 4: And then there's the pygmy hippo Cooropsis liberiensis. You don't
Speaker 4: need to know those names, but there's just two species.
Speaker 4: And pigmy hippos are one sixth the size of a
Speaker 4: regular hippo or a common hippo.
Speaker 5: Really really quite a bit smaller.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's kind of like a pig, right.
Speaker 5: A big pig. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Wait, how come I I didn't know about pygmy hippos
Speaker 4: until now.
Speaker 5: This is the reason most people don't. It's because pygmy
Speaker 5: hippos are only in West African countries, and even within
Speaker 5: West African countries, they're only in four of them, and
Speaker 5: they're very, very secretive.
Speaker 4: Whereas the big hippos that you're used to are just
Speaker 4: like here, they're like, I'm in the river, what's up?
Speaker 5: So we think of common hippos right there, this iconic
Speaker 5: animal of the African savannah. Right, you'll see a picture
Speaker 5: of like a big hippo gaping with a sunset behind it.
Speaker 5: Until two thousand and six, we hadn't even ever had
Speaker 5: a picture of pygmy hippos in the wild.
Speaker 3: No, and it's because they're.
Speaker 5: Very rare, right, they're an endangered animal. And there's used
Speaker 5: to be a very large forest complex in Sierra Leone
Speaker 5: and Liberia and Guinea and Kochvoir that kind of went
Speaker 5: over that entire region. It's largely been lost or there's
Speaker 5: been a lot of habitat loss of that forest, and
Speaker 5: that's what pigmy hippos were like. They're also solitary, so
Speaker 5: they don't do this big group aggregation that we see
Speaker 5: with common hippos. So it's not surprising. They're secretive and solitary,
Speaker 5: cryptic forest animals, and there's very very few of them.
Speaker 4: These a little big babies. They live in Northwest Africa
Speaker 4: and forests. They keep to themselves. They come out at
Speaker 4: night like mothman, and they're little, they're like farm hog size.
Speaker 4: As for how long humans have been gazing at them
Speaker 4: from behind a fence, according to this nineteen seventy two paper,
Speaker 4: The Care and Breeding of the Pigmy Hippopotamus in Captivity,
Speaker 4: the first time they were introduced into captivity was an
Speaker 4: eighteen seventy three in a Dublin zoo, and I was
Speaker 4: looking to try to find out more about that, but instead,
Speaker 4: I stumbled upon an article about a Scottish zoo who
Speaker 4: just a few months ago welcomed the birth of a
Speaker 4: baby girl pigmy hippo, and then they made the decision
Speaker 4: to name her Hagis. In all fairness, she does resemble
Speaker 4: kind of a gray lump made of skin, but they
Speaker 4: didn't have to go there. But yeah, the people, they
Speaker 4: want the baby pygmy hippos.
Speaker 3: With little sign that Moo dung feva is waning.
Speaker 4: It seems this bouncy pig is more than earning her key.
Speaker 4: Forced out of their land and hunted to near extinction
Speaker 4: in the wild, but in captivity, absolute sly.
Speaker 5: San Diego Zoo, you know, fantastic zoo. I used to
Speaker 5: go with my kids and we'd be standing at the
Speaker 5: pygmy hippo. People would say, oh, these are just baby hippos.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's got to be infuriating for you. What did
Speaker 4: you say?
Speaker 5: I corrected everybody they wanted it or not, but they
Speaker 5: do look honestly to me, they look very different. But
Speaker 5: I can understand why people maybe think they're the same thing,
Speaker 5: only smaller. So for everyone listening, they're absolutely not. Pigmy
Speaker 5: hippos are a separate species, and actually evolutionarily they split
Speaker 5: from common hippos like millions of.
Speaker 4: Years really, so it's convergent evolution.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and a lot of the structures that they have
Speaker 5: are not that similar. But one of the things that
Speaker 5: I know people sometimes get fascinated about common hippos is
Speaker 5: that they are most closely related to whales and cetaceans.
Speaker 4: No, that's true.
Speaker 5: No, that is one hundred percent true.
Speaker 4: No, what that's right? Common hippos, the big ones who
Speaker 4: are used to they were most closely related to whales.
Speaker 5: Whales, Uh, yes, and we know this from like all
Speaker 5: lines of evidence, Like it used to just be morphology,
Speaker 5: morphological evidence, and they did looking at fossils and different
Speaker 5: parts of the animals. But as signs progressed and we
Speaker 5: started using genetic information, they've used all sorts of genetic
Speaker 5: tests to demonstrate that they are in fact sister taxa
Speaker 5: cetaceans and hippos.
Speaker 4: So, no, there so many questions. Mouths, mouths I'm thinking
Speaker 4: of like bay Lean, huge insane mouths on whales and hippos.
Speaker 4: Why mouth so big?
Speaker 5: Why aren't their mouth so big? That's a good question, actually, so,
Speaker 5: and then Pygmy hippos don't have the gape like common
Speaker 5: hippos do. Right, common hippos have like one hundred and eighty.
Speaker 5: They can actually open their jaws.
Speaker 3: That much unhinge, you know.
Speaker 5: And it is a good question why because it's not
Speaker 5: like they're eating pumpkins and big things in the wild.
Speaker 5: I will say that male hippos. Sometimes you'll see male
Speaker 5: hippos engaged in what looks like we're going to say,
Speaker 5: like this mortal combat. I don't think it usually results
Speaker 5: in mortality. But they do use their gape both, I
Speaker 5: think against other hippos, you know, if they're having a
Speaker 5: territorial fight and other animals, they're pretty badass.
Speaker 4: How big are their teeth?
Speaker 5: Well, so they have different types of teeth. They have
Speaker 5: sort of molars, and then they have canines which come
Speaker 5: up which can be nine or ten inches, and then
Speaker 5: they also have incisors. The canines are actually most similar
Speaker 5: to elephant tusks.
Speaker 4: What are they used for?
Speaker 5: Again, it's probably just some type of defense.
Speaker 4: That's so much tooth for someone that eats grass.
Speaker 5: So much tooth, and it's a bummer for them because
Speaker 5: those canine teeth actually do have ivory. Oh so it's
Speaker 5: not as high quality as elephants. But it's one of
Speaker 5: the reasons that hippos have gotten wrapped up in the
Speaker 5: ivory trade or legal ivory trade, is because they're canines.
Speaker 5: So those are the ones that are sort of the
Speaker 5: curved ones coming out of their bottom jaw have made
Speaker 5: of ivory.
Speaker 4: These tusks, these mouth harpoons grow their entire lives, and
Speaker 4: the bottom incisors they jut straight out for better stabbing.
Speaker 4: And though females do have smaller teeth than the males,
Speaker 4: male tusks can be over twenty inches long or sixty centimeters.
Speaker 4: Why so big because they use them to gore the
Speaker 4: mouths of their rivals in this spitty, bloody jab battle.
Speaker 4: It looks like chewing on glass. Now that I know
Speaker 4: that they are sister taxa to whales. Yeah, swimming? How
Speaker 4: are they swimming? They got no flippers? What's going on?
Speaker 3: All right? You're ready? They aren't even swimming. No, they
Speaker 3: can't swim.
Speaker 5: They sort of glide walk run along the bottom.
Speaker 4: So they're never in deep water.
Speaker 5: They can be in deep water, they can't be submerged,
Speaker 5: you know, they can stander for about five to six minutes,
Speaker 5: but they're not actually swimming. I guess if you think about,
Speaker 5: like if you were doing aqua aerobics, I.
Speaker 4: Was just gonna say, this is like going to the
Speaker 4: y what.
Speaker 5: Yeah, don't try this with them, but it is just
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 4: And so how are they underwater for five or six minutes?
Speaker 4: And what occasion do they have to use that feature?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's like, that's a really good question. What
Speaker 5: are they doing under there? So one thing, remember we
Speaker 5: talked about them being related to whales. They have nostrils
Speaker 5: on the top of their So if you look at
Speaker 5: a hippo, let's see, how do I describe this?
Speaker 4: So essentially, your nostrils face your feet, right, don't put
Speaker 4: your fingers in there, but you know they're facing your feet,
Speaker 4: they're pointing down. Hippo nostrils are like on the top
Speaker 4: of their head and they're facing the sky like you know,
Speaker 4: Shrek's ears. That's like their nostrils. But they also have
Speaker 4: ears that look like Shrek's ears. So they kind of
Speaker 4: have like a Shrek's ears for ears, and then a
Speaker 4: small Shrek's ears that are actually their nostrils. It's just unsettling.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 5: And they actually have muscular and anatomical features that are
Speaker 5: similar to blowholes. Oh, so the nostrils close when they
Speaker 5: go underwater and when they come up. One of the
Speaker 5: ways you know that there's a hippo theirs because you
Speaker 5: hear the right when they blow out, and so that's
Speaker 5: similar to what we see with cetaceans right when they
Speaker 5: come up and there they're global. So there's actually some
Speaker 5: characteristics of their nostrils that are similar to that. What
Speaker 5: do they do underwater? It's hard to know because we
Speaker 5: really it's very hard to see. Jacques Cousteau famously like
Speaker 5: put this fake hippo, and people have tried this, like
Speaker 5: deployed like an autonomous you know, vehicle in the water
Speaker 5: dressed up as a hippo.
Speaker 2: Well, now touches a fleeing hippo and then Canna Prasis
Speaker 2: petting hell baby.
Speaker 4: It was not a very good idea.
Speaker 5: It doesn't go very well for the vehicle, right. The
Speaker 5: hippos are just like, no, get that thing out of here.
Speaker 5: So it's pretty hard to see what they're doing. And
Speaker 5: mostly they're in water that is not clear. You can't
Speaker 5: see anything.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say it's like a chocolate river.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: Hip hoops killing people, Let's talk about it, because they
Speaker 4: cause more human fatalities than sharks, which we as if
Speaker 4: we don't have it coming like we have it coming
Speaker 4: so hard. But how are they lethal?
Speaker 5: I do want to say, because I think I have
Speaker 5: to represent for the hippos on this one, that more
Speaker 5: hippos die as a result of hippo human conflict than humans,
Speaker 5: for sure, just not to underestimate the devastation that happens
Speaker 5: when there's a fatality. But I don't think hippos are
Speaker 5: naturally aggressive to people. The biggest threat that they face
Speaker 5: is habitat loss. They rely on fresh water. We rely
Speaker 5: on fresh water. We want to put a farm next
Speaker 5: to a river because that's where it's easy to grow crops.
Speaker 5: That's where they live. They're obligate, you know, in the water.
Speaker 5: They have to be there, so it's not like they
Speaker 5: can just pick up and move. There has been an
Speaker 5: increase in human fatalities, and I think it's really just
Speaker 5: an indication of habitat loss.
Speaker 4: So what's the source of all this drama? Surprise, it's us.
Speaker 4: Do those happen with overturned boats or bites or how
Speaker 4: does it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: It definitely happens with people fishing in boats. It happens
Speaker 5: with tourists in boats. It does sometimes happen on land
Speaker 5: because hippos are crop raids. Turns out they love eating
Speaker 5: you know, we just said they love pumpkins. If you
Speaker 5: plant them, they'll come eat them. It's not usually pumpkins,
Speaker 5: but like corn or beans, they do a lot of
Speaker 5: crop reading right to their defense. You put the food
Speaker 5: right next to where they live.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's like donuts in the breaker room. What
Speaker 4: are they supposed to do?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and much higher quality nutritionally than anything else that
Speaker 5: they're eating. So it makes sense to them. But it's
Speaker 5: a definite problem, and it's really tough to develop deterrents.
Speaker 5: You know, people talk about electric fences, but a lot
Speaker 5: of this is happening in places where there might not
Speaker 5: be electricity or a lot of infrastructure, and so it's
Speaker 5: a real challenge to figure out how to get hippos
Speaker 5: and humans to coexist.
Speaker 4: How are hippo numbers. We know that the pygmy hippo
Speaker 4: is not doing so great, but how are hippo numbers?
Speaker 4: In general?
Speaker 5: Common hippos are in thirty eight countries and so it's
Speaker 5: a challenge to get all that information. But our best
Speaker 5: guess is probably something around one hundred and thirty thousand.
Speaker 3: Which is not a lot in the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, well, recently we only count the ones
Speaker 5: in Africa.
Speaker 4: So aside from Zeus, are there hippos outside of Africa? Oh,
Speaker 4: we will discuss.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in Africa, and that's about probably a third of
Speaker 5: the amount of elephants that we have.
Speaker 3: And so it's a real issue.
Speaker 5: And the problem is when I would tell people, oh,
Speaker 5: I study hippos, first of all, that's crazy. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: we're concerned because their numbers are declining. If you're in
Speaker 5: a place where there are a lot of hippos, someone's
Speaker 5: going to turn around behind you and be like, excuse me,
Speaker 5: do you see that large group of like fifty to
Speaker 5: one hundred hippos? But they aggregate and so it may
Speaker 5: seem like there's a lot of them, but there's been
Speaker 5: a tremendous amount of loss of habitat. And you know,
Speaker 5: one hundred thirty thousand is not very many.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would have thought there were millions out there. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And when it comes to distribution, thirty eight countries is
Speaker 4: so many countries. But if you had a map of
Speaker 4: the world, where do we think they are that they're
Speaker 4: not and what would surprise us about where they are?
Speaker 4: Like when it comes to their range, what do most
Speaker 4: people think versus what's the reality?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think most people know, like I said, sort
Speaker 5: of East African countries, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa,
Speaker 5: Botswana has a lot of hippos. The place that we
Speaker 5: know hippos are probably most vulnerable right now is West
Speaker 5: African countries because there's much more population growth, less habitat
Speaker 5: for hippos, a lot more pressure on freshwater resources, and
Speaker 5: so I think there's probably people in countries like Nigeria
Speaker 5: or Guinea or Guinea Basa that may they may not
Speaker 5: even know that they have common hippos because they exist
Speaker 5: in such low densities.
Speaker 4: And Rebecca says that while there are only two species,
Speaker 4: there is debate about whether up to four subspecies exist
Speaker 4: since West and East African hippos are so isolated from
Speaker 4: each other geographically.
Speaker 5: And there's some disagreement of whether there are or aren't subspecies,
Speaker 5: But there are as potentially as many four subspecies.
Speaker 4: When you say disagreement, what is that like in the
Speaker 4: hippo community. Are there conferences to people not speak to
Speaker 4: certain colleagues anymore? What's that? What are hippo people like?
Speaker 3: There aren't very many of us.
Speaker 5: And part of it is because hippos are really hard
Speaker 5: to study. They're these animals that are hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 5: They're in the water during the day. It's very difficult
Speaker 5: to tell them apart. Right with elephants, we have big
Speaker 5: ears that you can identify individuals, and you just can't.
Speaker 5: And there're just not on a lot of radars for
Speaker 5: conservation organizations, so they haven't gotten a lot of funding.
Speaker 5: The hippo community is been on the ground.
Speaker 4: Oh well, you mentioned big ears. Why do they have
Speaker 4: such shiny ears?
Speaker 5: That is a good question. We don't really know, but
Speaker 5: it could have to do with the fact that most
Speaker 5: animals that develop in the water, like sea lions, have
Speaker 5: pretty tiny ears, right, And so I think we don't
Speaker 5: tend to see animals that have come up evolutionarily in
Speaker 5: the water with big ears.
Speaker 4: I guess there's a reason we don't go swimming in
Speaker 4: gowns exactly. You don't want too much drag. You mentioned
Speaker 4: the nostrils being like blowholes. The jungle cruise at Disney.
Speaker 4: You've been on it.
Speaker 3: I have been on it.
Speaker 4: You're not far from Anaheim. What I recall from that
Speaker 4: ride is that there's a lot of ponds. I believe
Speaker 4: there's some racism in it, but also there's a depiction
Speaker 4: of hippos as like nature's ultimate predator. Do you recall
Speaker 4: anything about that?
Speaker 5: I do.
Speaker 4: It looks like the hippos are going to attack the boat,
Speaker 4: but I'm going to scare them off, like I did
Speaker 4: my last relationship.
Speaker 5: I don't remember engaging too many people, but I certainly
Speaker 5: told my whole family and the people I was with
Speaker 5: this is not accurate. There's a lot of that. The
Speaker 5: one thing people ask me when they find out that
Speaker 5: I work on hippos is kind of where we started.
Speaker 5: Do they really kill more people than any African animal?
Speaker 5: I don't know who started that, but it certainly wasn't me,
Speaker 5: and I don't think it's accurate. It is not fact based.
Speaker 5: I think snakes kill way more people than hippos. I
Speaker 5: think the reason it started sort of this urban legend
Speaker 5: is because it's surprising. It's surprising that for people to
Speaker 5: know how fast they move on land, and the answer
Speaker 5: is faster than us, you know, maybe nineteen twenty miles
Speaker 5: an hour. They can run, they can move extremely fast
Speaker 5: in the water. And I think that there has been
Speaker 5: an increase in hippo human conflict and that takes people
Speaker 5: by surprise because they're not particularly aggressive, I think, naturally.
Speaker 5: I think what we're really seeing is habitat loss. They're
Speaker 5: under tremendous pressure, and so the number of attacks is
Speaker 5: on the rise. But I just want to tell people now,
Speaker 5: I don't think hippos kill more people than any other
Speaker 5: African animal.
Speaker 4: I mean, hello, mosquitoes.
Speaker 5: Yes, exactly, that's who started this whole. It was the
Speaker 5: mosquito lobby trying to point the finger at hippos.
Speaker 4: It goes like we did a mosquito episode recently. It's
Speaker 4: like mosquitoes other humans, yes, snakes, like jogs with rabies,
Speaker 4: like whatever. Humans and mosquitoes are the ones you got
Speaker 4: to watch out for.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Can I ask you patron questions, okay, your questions about
Speaker 4: hippos in a moment, But first we're going to fling
Speaker 4: some cash at a worthy cause, and this week it's
Speaker 4: going to way Chow Community Hippo Sanctuary, which is a
Speaker 4: community led tourism Attraction project. It's located at way Chow
Speaker 4: in the Upper West region of Ghana and they say
Speaker 4: that hippos help regulate both aquatic and terrestrial habitats in
Speaker 4: our great ecosystem engineers, so it was a great cause.
Speaker 4: To find out more. You can go to Wilder Institute
Speaker 4: dot org. The link is in the show notes. So
Speaker 4: thank you for the heads up on that, Rebecca, and
Speaker 4: thanks for the money sponsors.
Speaker 3: Get value.
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Speaker 4: The hearn okay your questions. You can submit yours via
Speaker 4: patreon dot com slash ologies. It costs one hot dollar
Speaker 4: a month, although the upper tiers let you leave us
Speaker 4: audio questions. So let's dig into the bag and let's
Speaker 4: get those answered and find out how to make hippos happier.
Speaker 4: Deborah Brunner said.
Speaker 6: Sadly, everything I know about hippos is from the Jungle
Speaker 6: Cruise at Disneyland. So I was wondering, is it true
Speaker 6: that hippos are really only dangerous when they're blowing bubbles
Speaker 6: and wiggling their ears.
Speaker 5: I don't think that's true, Deborah, Okay, I think bubbles
Speaker 5: and wiggling is not the thing you have to worry about.
Speaker 5: I think the real thing you have to worry about.
Speaker 5: People ask me like what do I do to sort
Speaker 5: of like fend off an attack? And you know the answer,
Speaker 5: is like, wait, why are you in a place where
Speaker 5: hippo's can of tack you? The thing we need to
Speaker 5: do is avoid them and not be in those spaces. Now,
Speaker 5: if you're a commercial fisherman in an area that has hippos,
Speaker 5: you know it's a different situation. But most of us aren't.
Speaker 4: So yeah, here's an idea. You don't want to see
Speaker 4: the sharp end of a tusk. Stay out of the river.
Speaker 4: If a hippo picked a lock and arrived in the
Speaker 4: middle of the night in your living room dripping with
Speaker 4: river poo, would you not grab the baseball bat between
Speaker 4: your bed and the nightstand and ask it, in no
Speaker 4: uncertain terms to scram I know you would. Speaking of certainty,
Speaker 4: do hippos know when they've found the one? Steph Simmons
Speaker 4: and Arbor Michigan asks.
Speaker 5: I'm wondering if hippos are monogamous.
Speaker 4: Do they mate for life?
Speaker 5: No, they are not monogamous. They don't mate for life,
Speaker 5: and in fact, they don't really form bonds like that.
Speaker 5: So hippos are something called polygynous, which means there's a
Speaker 5: single male, the dominant male, and lots of females that
Speaker 5: he probably mates with. Ladies and that herd is like
Speaker 5: that sort of with one male and lots of females
Speaker 5: until another dominant male comes over and challenges that hippo
Speaker 5: for that territory. So when you see the National Geographic
Speaker 5: pictures of two hippos with big gape sort of going
Speaker 5: at it with those big teeth, we were talking about,
Speaker 5: like what those are for? Those are territory fights for
Speaker 5: control over one of those polygynous hurts.
Speaker 4: Got it. They're kind of like in a bar fight
Speaker 4: a little bit. Yeah, they're showing off a little too exactly.
Speaker 4: Amanda and Eli loves Vultures both want to know. Eli says,
Speaker 4: I love hearing scientists describe animal sounds wesas and honks
Speaker 4: and croaks. Oh my, what do we know about the
Speaker 4: sounds they make? And what don't we know?
Speaker 5: That is a great question, And the answer is we
Speaker 5: know almost nothing about hippo communication.
Speaker 4: Why not.
Speaker 5: They're communicating in the air like we are, but they're
Speaker 5: also communicating in the water, and we don't really understand
Speaker 5: how they're doing it. We can record them, and people
Speaker 5: have done that, and they describe sort of clicks and
Speaker 5: other types of noises underwater, and then the noises that
Speaker 5: they make above ground are often described maybe this person
Speaker 5: who asked the question knows is like knees honks.
Speaker 4: Like that.
Speaker 5: Right, it's not a great one. I'm probably not going
Speaker 5: to call them in, but I think it's these crazy
Speaker 5: noises and we really don't know anything about what it means,
Speaker 5: what they're saying, how they're even communicating in the water.
Speaker 4: I love. I so appreciate that you're able to mimic
Speaker 4: them like that. Do people ever try to get them
Speaker 4: to come to them?
Speaker 3: No, one that I know.
Speaker 5: I think it's interesting because honestly, it just feels like
Speaker 5: one of the wonderful mysteries of hippos. But it's also
Speaker 5: one of the things that's kept them, I think, off
Speaker 5: the radar and kept them sort of in this area
Speaker 5: of we see you, but we don't know anything about you.
Speaker 5: Is just that they're so tough to study.
Speaker 4: We need more hippopotamologists, we absolutely do. Several listeners asked
Speaker 4: this question that was absolutely not on my radar whatsoever.
Speaker 4: Amanda Nusian asked, is there a plan for the cocaine
Speaker 4: hippos in Colombia from Escobar's estate? Kayla White all caps
Speaker 4: all caps, no punctuations, said, please, please, please talk about
Speaker 4: Pablo Escobar's hippos. Please, It's my favorite story to tell
Speaker 4: new people. It will be your new favorite story, especially
Speaker 4: for inquiring patrons. Alan Gross, Stephen Lee, Teresa Gleeson, Kristen Love,
Speaker 4: Matt Goff, Jen Squirrel, Alvarez a softly boiled egg, Christina Hammerberg,
Speaker 4: Lucy Vinn, Sigueny, Dana Gregorious of Thoms, and Pavca thirty
Speaker 4: four who needed to hear about these cocaine hippos.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a really crazy, crazy thing. So if you're
Speaker 5: just new to this, Pablo Escobar, who is a very
Speaker 5: famous narco trafficker, had four hippos, three females and one
Speaker 5: male on his ranch and compound, and upon his death
Speaker 5: in nineteen ninety three, for some reason, they just left them. Okay,
Speaker 5: cut to this many years later, and now there's probably
Speaker 5: around two hundred hippos roaming wild in this area of
Speaker 5: Columbia called the Magdalena River. Turns out it's a great place.
Speaker 3: To be a hippo.
Speaker 5: Oh no, So, hippos do really well under good conditions.
Speaker 5: It's one of the reasons why hippos can start having
Speaker 5: babies like four years earlier in captivity. It's because the
Speaker 5: conditions are so good. So that's what we think happened
Speaker 5: in Colombia. There's grass everywhere, it's never a dry season,
Speaker 5: they never lose water availability, there's unlimited food, unlimited resources,
Speaker 5: and that's why we've seen this population explode. So what
Speaker 5: do we do now that there are two hundred and
Speaker 5: maybe more hippos in Colombia. It's a really tough problem.
Speaker 5: There have been some suggestions and solutions that they've tried,
Speaker 5: but all of them take a lot of money. They've
Speaker 5: tried darting, some with contraception. They've tried castrating some of
Speaker 5: the males. They have actually colled one individual, so they've
Speaker 5: shot him. And that may sound terrible to some people.
Speaker 5: And I'm obviously concerned about hippo welfare, but I'm also
Speaker 5: concerned about the welfare of Colombians who live there. And
Speaker 5: there's lots of rare and endangered species in Colombia. There's
Speaker 5: no easy solution here. From my perspective, my focus is
Speaker 5: on protecting hippos in Africa and that's where we need
Speaker 5: to be focusing our resources. So the idea of people
Speaker 5: have talked about like trying to send them to captive,
Speaker 5: but it doesn't feel like a great use of resources
Speaker 5: to me, because that's not really where they're supposed to
Speaker 5: be at all. The only reason they're there is because
Speaker 5: someone had hippos as pits.
Speaker 4: I guess this sort of dovetails into the question of meat.
Speaker 4: Rebecca Morrison, t Naws, Michael Sherman, Daniel Shmaniel Chess Shunter.
Speaker 4: Several people asked do people eat hippos?
Speaker 5: They do, and I never have I'm a vegetarian, but
Speaker 5: people do eat hippos. There are some groups of folks
Speaker 5: who have taboos in certain countries, in certain areas against
Speaker 5: eating hippos, but in most of the places where I've been,
Speaker 5: people do eat them. They have very thick fat layers
Speaker 5: and sort of like pigs, and I've heard that they
Speaker 5: are extremely yummy, and you know, people eat a lot
Speaker 5: of the parts, and so that's a lot of meat
Speaker 5: for a lot of people.
Speaker 4: And a few listeners raining Emily and Andy Pepper hoped
Speaker 4: that I would bring up what patron mackenzie King wrote
Speaker 4: instead of question offered, this feels like a great place
Speaker 4: to drop the fun fact I have about hippos. McKenzie writes.
Speaker 4: In nineteen ten, Robert Broussard, a Louisiana senator, proposed that
Speaker 4: hippos be imported from Africa to Louisiana to be the
Speaker 4: new version of beef in America. This was due to
Speaker 4: corporate beef monopolies, beef shortages, and super high prices on
Speaker 4: beef nationwide. I was like, whoa raining Emily, Andy Pepper
Speaker 4: and McKenzie. I didn't even know about this, So yeah,
Speaker 4: the American Hippo Bill was introduced by Robert Brossard, or,
Speaker 4: as fellow Louisiana's called him in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 4: cousin Bob, and though he had the blessing of Teddy
Speaker 4: Roosevelt's New York Times food writers, who attested that hippo
Speaker 4: brisket was fatty and tasted like lake cow bacon, and
Speaker 4: Brossard even had the support of sem ecologists looking to
Speaker 4: solve the invasive water hyacinth problem that was plaguing New
Speaker 4: Orleans Alas. As you know, no swamp hippos lurk in
Speaker 4: our dark American waters, our sprawling bass pro shops don't
Speaker 4: sell hippo calling devices to locals. We don't get to
Speaker 4: see invasive hippos learning to use crosswalks or trying to
Speaker 4: mate with hot dog carts. But yeah, in other countries,
Speaker 4: if they got a hippo, they may eat a hippo.
Speaker 5: And one of the threats to hippos is unregulated hunting.
Speaker 5: And in large part it's because they just sit in
Speaker 5: the water. You can take them out with a muzzle loader,
Speaker 5: you know, an old gun. They're just sitting right there,
Speaker 5: and then you have two thousand pounds of meat. So
Speaker 5: in some places where there's been civil unrest or really
Speaker 5: hungry people, which makes a lot of sense, right, hippo
Speaker 5: populations have declined dramatically because people have needed to eat
Speaker 5: them to survive.
Speaker 4: Alison Ledman wanted to know, are there any other animals
Speaker 4: besides humans that prey on hippos or do predators just
Speaker 4: notice you're clear.
Speaker 5: In general, I think the only predator they really are
Speaker 5: concerned about is people. They're not worried about crocs. That's
Speaker 5: when crocodiles, that's what Christian that comes up. People ask, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, crocodiles eat baby hippos. Crocodiles do not stand
Speaker 5: a chance in the water, Like really, mom, hippos are
Speaker 5: extremely protective as moms are in lots of places that
Speaker 5: you don't, there's no chance that the crocodile's gonna get them.
Speaker 5: I have seen lions taking down like juvenile hippos, so
Speaker 5: I know that it happens, but I don't think it's
Speaker 5: particularly common.
Speaker 4: Crocodiles can't even get them. A crocodile will shred your
Speaker 4: ass up and down and drown you as casually as
Speaker 4: eating a Snickers, but they can't fight off a hippo.
Speaker 4: Who would dare not many creatures? If they don't have
Speaker 4: a ton of enemies, do they have a lot of friends?
Speaker 4: Like Marissa Kay, first time question asker, longtime listener, very
Speaker 4: excited about hippos, would like to know a little bit
Speaker 4: more about their social structure. Resa Pareni wants to know
Speaker 4: if they ever cuddle, do they pair or live separately?
Speaker 4: And patrons monaf and Layson, Fronnie Karrotzing, Storm, Kitty Hammond,
Speaker 4: Colin Robot, and Oliver Kallis also asks this and in
Speaker 4: Bronwyn Iverson's Hugo's words, do they have best friends?
Speaker 5: The one best friend I can think of is a
Speaker 5: really cool mutualistic relationships between hippos and oxpeckers. So if
Speaker 5: you see hippos that are out of the water or
Speaker 5: just partially submerged, you'll often see a particular type of
Speaker 5: bird that sits on them. It's called an oxpecker that
Speaker 5: actually eats like ticks and other insects. So the bird
Speaker 5: gets free lunch and the hippo gets cleaned. So that's
Speaker 5: definitely a friend. In terms of their social structure, I
Speaker 5: think they are really social animals. We don't understand like
Speaker 5: who's related to who in those herds. Again, we can't
Speaker 5: barely tell them apart. And for most people, unless you
Speaker 5: spend a lot of time looking at hippos, you can't
Speaker 5: even tell males and females apart unless they open their mouths.
Speaker 5: They're k nine teeth for the males are much thicker.
Speaker 5: Their head structures different, but like they're not sexually dimorphic, right,
Speaker 5: Sometimes males and females are really different sizes or different colors.
Speaker 5: They're all gray, they're all fat, they're all really big,
Speaker 5: and you really can't tell males and females apart when
Speaker 5: they're you know, mostly submerged. Sometimes you'll see like crashes,
Speaker 5: which is like groups of females and lots of offspring,
Speaker 5: like lots of calves, and they can play together in
Speaker 5: the water. But again that's because there's these big groups
Speaker 5: where it's one dominant male and lots of females and
Speaker 5: their offspring.
Speaker 4: You know, speaking of males. People asked about Rob Lara
Speaker 4: the Pooh helicopter why Lena Carpenter wanted to know how
Speaker 4: do hippos just poop in the water like the water
Speaker 4: they're in and then proceed to swim in it like
Speaker 4: no big deal, boy, hippop poop spraing discuss do they
Speaker 4: have mittens? Do they just go wherever? There must be
Speaker 4: so much of it.
Speaker 5: That is definitely true. There is so much of it,
Speaker 5: and we actually think that hippo poop and not just
Speaker 5: the poop itself, but like all of the compounds like
Speaker 5: silica and silicon that's in there are really important nutrients
Speaker 5: for the water areas, the wetlands, the rivers, the lakes
Speaker 5: where they live, and there's some evidence that like when
Speaker 5: hippopopulations decline, like fish populations also decline.
Speaker 4: Thank you patron and first time question asker Alison Ludwig
Speaker 4: for asking do telapia really swim behind them and eat
Speaker 4: their pooh, Alison Ludwig, they do so, yes, mlyg Ashley
Speaker 4: Tween and Rowan Tree. There are symbiotic relationships of plenty
Speaker 4: in a hippo's life, and so to get some shiggles.
Speaker 4: And Emma Henson who asked, I have to befriend one
Speaker 4: before I die, how do I go about this? The
Speaker 4: answer is to become a talapia. You're never going to
Speaker 4: be bored, You're never gonna be hungry. Every day is
Speaker 4: a feast.
Speaker 5: It is true that hippos. When you ask, like, where
Speaker 5: does a hippo poop, the answer is anywhere it wants.
Speaker 5: Mostly it is in the water. But with males, we
Speaker 5: do see that marking behavior another crazy thing. You ready
Speaker 5: for this really, So what males do is they come
Speaker 5: out of the water, they start peeing, and then that
Speaker 5: they spray it backwards and then with their tail use
Speaker 5: that to like spread with the stream of the pea
Speaker 5: and the poof coming out. It's gross and yet extremely effective.
Speaker 5: And I think it's territory marking, although we don't really
Speaker 5: know this because we really only seen males do that,
Speaker 5: so we think they're marking their territory. And you'll see
Speaker 5: it as they come out of the water. They kind
Speaker 5: of do this at a couple places. Sometimes they'll mush
Speaker 5: it against like a tree or you know, a rock,
Speaker 5: and we think, again, we don't know this for sure,
Speaker 5: but we think it's dominant males marking their territory.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. Yeah, which I've seen it in people's
Speaker 4: like horrified zoo videos go. But I hope that that's
Speaker 4: like a blessing.
Speaker 5: They're just spreading the love, right, They're spreading what they
Speaker 5: do best, and it is one of the things they
Speaker 5: do best. They're really important nutrient movers and ecosystem engineers
Speaker 5: in that way.
Speaker 4: Stacey Bendixen wants to know do they sleep underwater?
Speaker 5: No, Mostly when they're sleeping, they're resting above the water.
Speaker 5: So I remember I was thinking, like, imagine, there's sort
Speaker 5: of a log that's the hippos head, and so mostly
Speaker 5: when you see them resting, it's they're resting on the bottom.
Speaker 5: And that's one of the reasons why their nostrils are
Speaker 5: really at the end of the log that's their head,
Speaker 5: is so they can breathe that way. So they're only
Speaker 5: underwater again at like five to six minutes maybe max.
Speaker 3: At a time.
Speaker 5: It could easily be less. They're not sleeping underwater.
Speaker 4: Okay, there's no way that they could I lung capacity wise,
Speaker 4: but in general they're They're not like snoozing in a
Speaker 4: pile on the banks.
Speaker 3: Though they look like logs.
Speaker 5: Honestly, when you go to an area where there's a
Speaker 5: lot of hippos, so there's sort of this like small
Speaker 5: top of the log that's the hippo that you can see,
Speaker 5: that's them, just sort of and actually I should say,
Speaker 5: are they sleeping?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: They're certainly resting. We don't one hundred percent know what
Speaker 5: they're doing when they're in there, in large part because
Speaker 5: it's not safe for us to get in there and
Speaker 5: find out.
Speaker 4: Do you think that scientists are starting to rely more
Speaker 4: on like drone footage? Is that helpful in terms of
Speaker 4: getting kind of closer to them and getting like a
Speaker 4: better eye on them.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, that's an amazing technology that I think has changed
Speaker 5: a lot. One of the reasons that it's so hard
Speaker 5: to find out how many hippos we have. That seems
Speaker 5: like such a simple thing, just go count them like elephants.
Speaker 5: The problem is when you go do a flyover, right,
Speaker 5: you take pictures that's one of the ways that we count,
Speaker 5: you know, animals in remote areas. At any one time,
Speaker 5: there could be thirty to forty percent of the populations
Speaker 5: that's submerged, right. They heard a noise and they got scared,
Speaker 5: and so now they're under the water so you can't
Speaker 5: see them. And so your own technology has been amazing
Speaker 5: opportunity to be able to really count hippos and just
Speaker 5: get some basic questions like how many are there, where
Speaker 5: are they, how are these numbers changing? And I know
Speaker 5: it sounds really basic, but for something that's the fifth
Speaker 5: largest land animal, we still don't have great data on that.
Speaker 4: In terms of the word the beach master. Are you're
Speaker 4: familiar with that term? Is it? There's a really long
Speaker 4: time ago a documentary about hippos and they talked about
Speaker 4: how there's a beach master of hippos.
Speaker 5: Well, the beach master a spot in the deepest part
Speaker 5: of the river is worth fighting for.
Speaker 4: And I wasn't sure if this is like a very
Speaker 4: common term for hippos. And this is just a side note,
Speaker 4: but that term has stuck around me and my good
Speaker 4: girlfriend groups for decades now, where the beach master is
Speaker 4: the one in our friend group who now has to
Speaker 4: decide like where we're going to go to dinner, or
Speaker 4: like someone needs to beach master this because I can't deal.
Speaker 4: But I wasn't sure that I wasn't a beach masters. Like, no,
Speaker 4: that's what we call the dominant mail. But no, beach
Speaker 4: master's not a familiar term.
Speaker 5: It is not a familiar term with me, but it
Speaker 5: does kind of make sense. There is certainly a dominant mail.
Speaker 5: And again people always say, like, well, where are the
Speaker 5: rest of the guys. Yeah, the rest of the guys
Speaker 5: live in a bachelor herd. You know, it's some distance
Speaker 5: away from the rest of the herd, so it's literally
Speaker 5: all the other males. So at some point juveniles get
Speaker 5: kicked out of the main pod and they have to
Speaker 5: go with the bachelors, and that's where all the other
Speaker 5: adult males go that aren't the dominant mail. So you
Speaker 5: can find a bachelor herd that's associated with a large,
Speaker 5: belligionous herd.
Speaker 4: It reminds me of like on The Bachelor at when
Speaker 4: one gets a one on one date and the rest
Speaker 4: have to hang out at the mansion.
Speaker 5: That's exactly it. That they're waiting for their roses. They're
Speaker 5: waiting for their turn a bat and they might challenge
Speaker 5: that male, right, and that's when you'll see those cool
Speaker 5: sort of like big gaping fights where they stand off
Speaker 5: and you know, fight on the beach. So maybe that's
Speaker 5: the beachmaster.
Speaker 4: Do a lot of hippo males divergence.
Speaker 5: Excellent question. It's very challenging to know how much sneaking
Speaker 5: there is, right, And for a lot of species where
Speaker 5: there's like a dominant male or even or monogamous couples,
Speaker 5: there's still extra pair copulations we call it. And I
Speaker 5: don't know how much sneaking there is. So it's possible
Speaker 5: that those bachelor males sneak and get access to the
Speaker 5: females what we don't know, And that's something that if
Speaker 5: we could get like tissue samples or you know, be
Speaker 5: able to do genetic testing to be able to kind
Speaker 5: of figure out lineages or which calves are related to
Speaker 5: which parents. It's so hard to get to them and
Speaker 5: it's almost impossible to tell them apart. Hippos just don't
Speaker 5: have any structures. It's rude probably to say they all
Speaker 5: look alike, but to our eye, they really do.
Speaker 4: When it comes to trying to get DNA samples. Their
Speaker 4: skin seems so thick. Is you can't just like run
Speaker 4: a Q tip over their skin and get samples, right, Like,
Speaker 4: what is it you've touched hippos.
Speaker 5: I have touched hippos in captivity. I have touched dead hippos.
Speaker 5: I have not touched a live hippo in the wild.
Speaker 5: I've never been that close or in you know, I
Speaker 5: wouldn't do that. But it's a great question, like how
Speaker 5: do we get samples? Another question is like, why don't
Speaker 5: you just put a collar on them? What's the big deal?
Speaker 5: Go figure out where they go on the collar front.
Speaker 5: Turns out hippos don't have a neck. Most of the
Speaker 5: collars go around neck.
Speaker 3: They don't have a neck.
Speaker 5: What they have as a head that's attached to like
Speaker 5: the rest of their barrel shaped body. You can't put
Speaker 5: a collar on them. So most of the technology that
Speaker 5: we have for tracking rhinos or tracking elephants won't work
Speaker 5: on a hippos. In fact, a colleague of mine the
Speaker 5: first tag that we pok and it wasn't a collar tag.
Speaker 5: It was like a tag that they attached just on
Speaker 5: the skin. Was It wasn't until twenty thirteen and it
Speaker 5: stayed on for like a kilometer amazing feet, but really
Speaker 5: really hard, so hard to figure out where they're going
Speaker 5: and to get samples from them. The other thing about hippos,
Speaker 5: remember we talked about, they're amazing from head to tail.
Speaker 5: They have one of the thickest hides or skins of
Speaker 5: any animal, hands down. In fact, people used to use
Speaker 5: hippo skin to make whips because they are the most
Speaker 5: durable and hardest. So actually even getting a dart or
Speaker 5: something like that into a hippo very very hard.
Speaker 4: But they're not a packet rum.
Speaker 5: They are not.
Speaker 4: Apparently, a hippo hide can be two and a half
Speaker 4: inches thick or six centimeters, which is comparable to a
Speaker 4: very robust slab of kitchen countertop or a butcher block
Speaker 4: made out of wet leather. And speaking of leather, yes,
Speaker 4: you could buy, say, a wallet made from hip and
Speaker 4: it looks kind of like thick, crackly swayed. You could
Speaker 4: buy it, that is, if you had ninety nine dollars
Speaker 4: plus tax and shipping and you wanted it. Now. They
Speaker 4: are I found some. They're handmade in Indiana by Amish craftsmen,
Speaker 4: and their website has images demonstrating like it's bill fold
Speaker 4: and slots for up to eight credit cards. And I
Speaker 4: was scrolling to the bottom of the description and I
Speaker 4: spotted this small disclaimer that said money and cards are
Speaker 4: not included. And I'm like, they must have gotten one
Speaker 4: email from a customer who was just enraged that their's
Speaker 4: arrived empty. But from seeing red to being tickled pink?
Speaker 4: What a segue. Let's discuss a question from Mira and
Speaker 4: Caradado Ingrid Felsel dish it to Tani, Scott Shaldon, Nikki
Speaker 4: g Sarah Pelok, Curtis Dakahashi, Edward McGregor, Anthony Richards, Katy King,
Speaker 4: Ashley Mars, and Sarah Manns who asked, I beg your
Speaker 4: finest pardon sweating blood. So speaking of their skin though,
Speaker 4: sweating blood, what's deal? Do they sweat red? Is it sunscreen?
Speaker 4: What's going on?
Speaker 5: They don't sweat blood, but it is sort of a
Speaker 5: reddish orange pigment, and that is something that people have
Speaker 5: isolated because they were able to get it off a
Speaker 5: captive hippo and a fantastic group of scientists from Japan
Speaker 5: in two thousand and four was able to extract some
Speaker 5: and figure out like molecularly, chemically, what's going on here?
Speaker 5: And it's just as you said, it's not blood. It
Speaker 5: is a secretion, but it is a sunscreen and probably
Speaker 5: an antibiotic.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 5: And we think that that secretion both protects them from
Speaker 5: the sun, which we know is very important. We talked
Speaker 5: about hippos the need for water and important for their
Speaker 5: thermal regulation, but also that secretion seems to be an
Speaker 5: important antibiotic.
Speaker 4: Ooh, I want that a little bit.
Speaker 5: I wish I had it right. I could really use
Speaker 5: that sounds green right.
Speaker 4: A few Moodang questions, because of course.
Speaker 5: She's the cutest, cutest.
Speaker 4: Who could resist this face?
Speaker 6: Certainly not these huge crowds lighting up at a zoo
Speaker 6: in Thailand to catch a glimpse of two month old Moodang.
Speaker 4: That's Thaie for bouncing pig belle aspiring garbage. Archaeologists asked,
Speaker 4: is it common or somewhat out of the ordinary for
Speaker 4: a baby hippo to be as ornery as Mudang? No shade,
Speaker 4: I wish I could be as ornery as Mudang in public?
Speaker 4: They ask is Mudang ornery for a young pigmy hippo?
Speaker 5: You know, I've asked for a couple other places, Like,
Speaker 5: she does seem to have a very lively personality. Nothing
Speaker 5: that she's done that I've seen seems like out of
Speaker 5: the ordinary. Anybody who's taking care of kids, like they
Speaker 5: open their mouth all the time. They're pretty demanding and
Speaker 5: they want attention. And she seems to be extremely healthy
Speaker 5: and just you know, a lively, pygmy hippo.
Speaker 4: What about some controversy regarding Mudang, Jennifer Gorgan said, I
Speaker 4: heard there was some controversy, but the treatment of Mudang.
Speaker 4: Do you have an opinion on the issue. Anne Villnide
Speaker 4: wanted to know. Would love some professional information. Are caretakers
Speaker 4: riling up some captive animals for the reactions that visitors
Speaker 4: want to see? They asked? And whether online content being
Speaker 4: the goal is harming the creatures that we seem to
Speaker 4: love so much. And Natalie Jones asked, is Mudang doing okay?
Speaker 4: It seems like having thousands of humans yelling and looking
Speaker 4: at you a day would mess up a babies development.
Speaker 4: Is this a stage mother type of situation that needs intervention.
Speaker 5: One thing that's been wonderful about having Mudang on the
Speaker 5: scene is that people know about pigmy hippos and a
Speaker 5: lot of people maybe didn't even know they existed. They're
Speaker 5: not just smaller common hippos. This is a separate species.
Speaker 5: It's endangered, and you know, I think this will be
Speaker 5: the only opportunity for most people to ever see a
Speaker 5: pigmy hippo. In fact, even people who study pigmy hippos
Speaker 5: again only got pictures of them in the wild in
Speaker 5: two thousand and six from remote cameras, not a person
Speaker 5: with the camera, a camera out there by itself. So
Speaker 5: there's so much we don't know, and I think that
Speaker 5: having more people aware of pigmihippos is great. The thing
Speaker 5: that really upset me about the stories knowing that people
Speaker 5: through things in the enclosure. You know, there were people
Speaker 5: throwing shrimp or other types of food, and hopefully everybody
Speaker 5: who heard that story realized that's the thing that's a danger,
Speaker 5: Like you can never throw anything into an enclosure that
Speaker 5: has a wild animal. You may think you're doing, you know,
Speaker 5: something good, but they have a very strict diet. And
Speaker 5: I think having folks being respectful, you know, being quiet,
Speaker 5: is a great thing when you go see animals in
Speaker 5: captivity because it is stressful and it is important that
Speaker 5: We're mindful of what their experience is like, so I
Speaker 5: appreciate those concerns.
Speaker 4: Okay, last question from listeners.
Speaker 7: Ca Baba said, Hi, Ali, this is Kate in wake Forest,
Speaker 7: North Carolina. I served in the Piece court in Botswana
Speaker 7: where I was lucky enough to see hippos and the
Speaker 7: Okabanga delta. I'm wondering what your ologist thinks might happen
Speaker 7: to these specific populations given climate change and upstream development
Speaker 7: in this paget.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 5: This is a really important point to talk about, which
Speaker 5: is we talked about hippos being threatened from habitat loss,
Speaker 5: which is just us, you know, encroaching developing areas around
Speaker 5: fresh water. But climate change is another real serious threat,
Speaker 5: particularly for common hippos, but probably pigmies as well. But
Speaker 5: they rely on water resources and a lot of the places,
Speaker 5: a lot of the projections of where we think, you know,
Speaker 5: what's going to happen. It means less rainfall, less standing water.
Speaker 5: I think it's a real threat. It's getting closer as
Speaker 5: we think about like ensuring coexistence of people and hippos
Speaker 5: into the future. Is the fact that the climate is
Speaker 5: changing and they are so sensitive to these climatic shifts.
Speaker 5: So I would say, when we think about like winners
Speaker 5: and losers of climate change, I would put hippos in
Speaker 5: the loser category, you know, and something that we absolutely
Speaker 5: it has to be on our radar because these are
Speaker 5: the resources that they need.
Speaker 4: Is there any flim flam that you just have to
Speaker 4: bust that You're like, this is not how it is
Speaker 4: other than painting them as absolutely cold blooded killers who
Speaker 4: want nothing more than humans demise.
Speaker 3: Yes, the whole.
Speaker 5: They kill more than anyone else. Like, if I can
Speaker 5: do one thing in my lifetime, I feel like it's
Speaker 5: dispelled that. Why No, it's not right, it's not accurate.
Speaker 3: Stop saying it the other flim flam.
Speaker 5: I guess it's really just this idea of like, oh,
Speaker 5: there's so many of them, it's not true. Like I
Speaker 5: know that they are abundant and they come in these
Speaker 5: big groups, but they're really declining in a lot of places,
Speaker 5: and even in areas where their populations may be stable,
Speaker 5: they're losing habitat, either directly from human development or because
Speaker 5: of climate change on slightly longer scales. But I think
Speaker 5: that's a really important one. And I care about elephants too,
Speaker 5: Like I sometimes come across as like grumpy about elephants.
Speaker 5: But if I am, it's because elephants just get so
Speaker 5: much attention, and I know they have incredible behaviors and
Speaker 5: they you know, mourn they're dead, and they communicate where
Speaker 5: we can't hear them in amazing things. But I think
Speaker 5: hippos have all of these things too. It's just that
Speaker 5: we can't see it and we don't know it. But
Speaker 5: they are these incredible animals, certainly worthy of a future.
Speaker 4: What's the worst thing about being ap apotomologist.
Speaker 5: I think the worst thing is just that expectation of, oh, well,
Speaker 5: we know everything, but we don't even know how many
Speaker 5: there are, like basic basic things, and that's sometimes frustrating
Speaker 5: because you know, you kind of have to start them
Speaker 5: from the scratch. And so studying hippos is about studying
Speaker 5: human coexistence with them, and I'm really hoping that the
Speaker 5: sort of the next generation of scientists can use that
Speaker 5: technology to really think about innovative ways to protect people
Speaker 5: and protect hippos and their habitat.
Speaker 4: What's your favorite thing about hippos?
Speaker 5: I honestly am captivated by them, sort of as these
Speaker 5: like organisms. Like I said, I am fascinated by all
Speaker 5: those adaptations, all these things about their body, whether it's
Speaker 5: their teeth or their stomach or their skin.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 5: And it feels like every time you sort of look
Speaker 5: under another part of the hippo hood, they have another
Speaker 5: incredible adaptation to being these semi aquatic sort of like
Speaker 5: half whale half antelope, you know. And that's incredible to me.
Speaker 5: And I still find myself captivated, I mean, even though
Speaker 5: I've been studying this for a long time, by those adaptations,
Speaker 5: by all of the things that their bodies are able
Speaker 5: to do and navigate.
Speaker 4: If there were ever one sleeping next to you, would
Speaker 4: you want to give it a gentle kiss on the nosey?
Speaker 3: I would? I know better.
Speaker 5: We don't touch wild animals in the wild, but they're incredible,
Speaker 5: so yes, I can safely say that if I happen
Speaker 5: to find one next to me that just wandered up
Speaker 5: and I could touch it safely, I absolutely would.
Speaker 4: I wonder if they know how much we love them.
Speaker 5: That is a good question. They probably don't give a
Speaker 5: hoot about any of that, but I would love that
Speaker 5: if that could really translate to people's passion of saying
Speaker 5: I want to live in a world that has hippos,
Speaker 5: that has pigmy hippos, common hippos, and I want to
Speaker 5: know that they're going to be here for a really,
Speaker 5: really long time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this whole episode is convinced me that we're in
Speaker 4: a toxic relationship with hippos. We're the toxic partner because
Speaker 4: if we fawn over them, we love bomb them, and
Speaker 4: then we take what they need most, we take the
Speaker 4: their habitat.
Speaker 5: And we spread lies about them.
Speaker 4: And then we slander them. So if anything, if you
Speaker 4: love hippos, just know you're the toxic one in the relationship.
Speaker 4: Clean up your act a little bit.
Speaker 3: It's you, it's not them. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely so Hippo people happy to answer questions, and we're
Speaker 4: so very lucky that doctor Lewison was amenable to answering ours.
Speaker 4: Thank you again, Rebecca, and you can find links to
Speaker 4: her research and lab, as well as to the way
Speaker 4: Chow Community Hippo Sanctuary at the link in the show notes,
Speaker 4: and we also have a link to our new Showsmologies,
Speaker 4: which are shorter, kid friendly classroom save versions of Ologies Classics.
Speaker 4: They used to be in this feed, but I bounced
Speaker 4: them to their own feed, so you can look for
Speaker 4: that show. Wherever you get podcasts, it's got new green artwork.
Speaker 4: We are in ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm
Speaker 4: on there as well as Ali Ward. It's just one
Speaker 4: L and Alie. Thank you to patrons at patronon dot
Speaker 4: com slash Oologies for making the show possible. Ologies merch
Speaker 4: is available at the link in the show notes. Thank
Speaker 4: you to Aaron Talbert for admitting the Oologies podcast Facebook
Speaker 4: group Love Tamama cas. Aveline Maleick makes our professional transcripts.
Speaker 4: Kelly ar Dwyer does the website and while Dilworth is
Speaker 4: our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is the beach master of
Speaker 4: a Managing director. Jake Chafe Edits like a Hip pro
Speaker 4: and the Mighty Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio lead edits
Speaker 4: these into emission. Every week. Nick Thorburn moaned and honked
Speaker 4: out the theme music and if you stick around to
Speaker 4: the end of the episode, I tell you a secret
Speaker 4: about my life if you want it. And okay, so
Speaker 4: this week it's that I wear one of those rings
Speaker 4: and ORR ring, which I've used for years, but an
Speaker 4: Aura ring helps track sleep and your steps and stress
Speaker 4: and no big shocker I've started meditating again, literally just
Speaker 4: in the last week. My soul feels like a hairball
Speaker 4: in a drain over current events. And I can tell
Speaker 4: on my urr ring that when I do meditate, my
Speaker 4: heart rate and stress levels go way down. So that
Speaker 4: is great incentive to keep at it. And I was
Speaker 4: going to tell you guys, that is a secret. And
Speaker 4: I looked at my app to day to see like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I did go down this morning when I meditated, But
Speaker 4: I also saw this really sharp spike in anxiety today
Speaker 4: and I looked and it was like two hours ago,
Speaker 4: and I realized it was precisely the time when I
Speaker 4: spilled a quart of fish soup on my pants and
Speaker 4: the kitchen floor and inside the fridge. It was like
Speaker 4: everywhere in fish soup, of all the things, iced tea, whatever,
Speaker 4: fine fish soup. Like honestly, anyway, anxiety spike, deep breaths.
Speaker 4: We're doing our best. We're all doing our best. I
Speaker 4: hope you enjoy a nice bath today, like a hippo wood,
Speaker 4: or you could treat yourself to a big mud salad.
Speaker 4: Whatever keeps your skin thick and your spirits buoyant, go
Speaker 4: do it, okay. Pacadermatology homeology, crypto zoology, lithology, damnology, meteorology, bartology, napology, cereology, skilology.
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