Huge Hippos
The word “Hippopotamus” means “water horse” in Greek. Hippos are in the family of Hippopotamidae. The earliest hippo fossils found were from 16 million years ago. Surprisingly, a hippo’s closest relatives are whales and porpoises, instead of pigs or rhinos.
The plural for hippopotamus is hippopotami and for hippo it is hippos. A group of hippos can be called a pod, herd, dale, or bloat of hippos. A bull is a male, a cow is a female, and a calf is a baby hippo.
Hippos are one of the largest land mammals in the world. The elephant is the largest and heaviest land mammal, but it is debated whether hippos or White rhinos are second largest. The average hippo is 11 feet long and 5 feet tall at its shoulders. The average weight for an adult male hippo is 3,300 to 4,000 pounds, for a female it is 2,900-3,300 pound, and an old male can weight over 7,000 pounds!!!
Hippopotami eat 88 pounds of food every night. That is 1.5% of their body weight. Hippo’s graze at night and wallow in the mud all day. They like short of patches grass called “hippo lawns.” In zoos, the hippos are fed herbivore pellets, alfalfa, Bermuda hay, lettuce and as a special treat melons. We went to the Cairo Zoo and got to feed a giant hippo alfalfa. From personal experience, hippos have HUGE mouths!
Hippos live in rivers and lakes in the sub-Sahara desert in Africa in groups of up to forty. Hippos have clear eyelids like goggles to see under water. Since they cannot float or swim, hippos walk underwater! Only the male hippos are territorial, and the male hippos are only territorial in the water.
There are 125,000-150,000 hippos left in the wild. Zambia and Tanzania have the biggest hippo populations. Unfortunately, hippo populations are declining mostly because of poachers. The poachers want the Hippos soft 20 inch teeth that are perfect for carving and their meat, which people eat.