Watching the Animal channel I always see like three hippos terrorized by one lion. Yet the hippos aren’t the least bit afraid of the crocs. It is said a hippo can kill a croc with one bite. However the lions are afraid to come near the water as the crocs will get them.
What gives? How come the hippos are afraid of the lions.
I am of course refering to adults of the species.
Oh My!
So lion beats hippo, hippo beats croc, croc beats lion. Sounds like Animal Planet’s verson of rock-paper-scissors.
I’m asuming the hippos are on dry land when the lions are acting ornery.They’re probably more afraid for their young,like rhinos and elephants,since a lion,or pack,don’t routinely go after prey that big unless they get them at a disadvantage,like being mired in mud.
I wouldn’t think they’d fear anything in the water (the hippos).In that element they’re King Kong.
Well obviously it is just TV but there are THREE hippos and ONE lion (on land) and the hippos are all scared.
Then you have one hippos going thru a whole herd(herd? group? parliment?) of crocs
Apparently there’s no standard term – just one page of Google hits on
“crocodiles” + “collective”
yields “congregation”, “float”, “bask”, and “treachery” as options.
A factor could be that lions are warm-blooded (and consequently must eat more often); whereas, crocs are cold-blooded and don’t have to eat as often. Other animals can sense when an alligator or croc is hungry and pay them no mind when they’re not. Here in Charleston, SC, I see birds sitting on objects on the water with gators all around them. I don’t know how often gators eat, but not that often, apparently.
???
You happen to have a site for that, 'cause I have a really hard time believeing it is either remotely true or accurate.
Actually you do not want to fuck with hippos when they come out of the water and are starting off on their foraging routes, 'cause they don’t let anything get in their way. Hippos are responsible for more human deaths in Africa then any other large animal, mainly because of human arrogance/stupidity.
I have no site or cite, just sight. Just go to a place where gators, birds, turtles, and other animals gather and see for yourself. Hippos are not in th equation.
Don’t birds peck and eat stuff off of gators and crocs? Maybe the crocs realize this. Also maybe the crocs realize a bird is too small to waste energy on. Unless of course it is starving.
Yeah, well, some of these birds are quite large. You’re talking great blue herons, great egrets, ibises, storks, etc., along with the smaller birds and turtles. And no, they don’t groom the alligators. We have cattle egrets here but I don’t see them grooming alligators. The fact is that a cold-blooded animal needs to eat about once a week or less. YMMV.
I beleive some of the apparent indifference of certain animals to seeing crocs/gators laying around and getting fairly close is just that - they can see them and they can see that the croc’s not going for them. It’s not the basking croc laying on a sand bar in plain site that you have to worry about, it’s the one swimming up in front of you while you’re sipping water and looking around behind you for land predators that’s dangerous. They may only eat once a week, but it can be tricky for animals to know whether his last meal was yesterday or 7 days ago. Then again some animals never get near any croc, whether it’s stalking them or whether it’s in comatose… monkeys are like that I think.
Markxxx, I can’t imagine what you saw on TV, but bear in mind 3 things:
An adult hippopotamus can stomp a lion; maybe 2 or 3 of 'em. A freakishly huge male lion might weigh 700 pounds, whereas a hippo can weigh more than 6000 pounds.
Lions normally hunt together. They will sometimes team up and grab a BABY hippo.
Nature footage is often recycled, creatively edited, and sometimes out-and-out fabricated (like the footage of lemmings drowning themselves). If you saw three hippos “terrorized” by one lion, I’ll bet there were three or four more lions and several baby hippos not on camera.