I have read a number of articles and seen video of hippos living wild in Colombia. They are descended from animals in the private zoo that Pablo Escobar maintained while still in power. The video I saw today on Animal Planet emphasized how these animals are dangerous and that there have been no human fatalities yet it’s only a matter of time.
They are an invasive species, not native to the area,so why not just have the military or some other agency go in and eliminate them? At the time this show was made there were three or four dozen of them. If they were killed it would be easier to move the bodies than when trying to safely ship out a live animal.
Slight tangent: the hippos were sort of the holy grail of The Grand Tour’s Colombia Special (Season 3, episodes 2 & 3) Spoiler alert: they don’t find them until the very end of episode 3
Those cool animals are very dangerous They kill more people in Africa than any other. Wait until a kid gets bitten in half and then there will be a hue and cry.
I wonder how many people have ever been killed by dog attacks in Columbia? If at least one, that’s more than hippos. Since dogs are an invasive species, maybe the Columbian military should kill them all.
They’re herbivores. Hungry doesn’t matter. But they’re real ornery and do routinely kill people they encounter.
I’m not defending the idea of exterminating them, but it would be nice if they could be rounded up and transferred to zoos or to Africa before the invasive population gets too big to prevent them taking over the “apex ornery herbivore” niche in much of Latin America.
Last I read was that there are plans to sterilize them all. They could more easily just kill them, but that’s a hard sell to the Colombian public which find the wholesale slaughter of wildlife just as off-putting as people anywhere else in the world.
It’s not their fault that they’re there, or that they’re a soidisant invasive species, so why hunt down innocent animals and kill them? As punishment for their existence? None of those hippopotami ever did anything to you, so why are you so eager to see them slaughtered? They’re a handful of individual creatures just living their lives, none of whom considers him- or herself to be invasive, or a problem. But you’d like to have people just go in and murder them when all they’ve done is be their hippopotamus selves.
It’s disgusting how quickly the human mind lights on “Kill them!” as the default solution to any difficult situation involving non-human animals, and how easily it creates and grants itself the right to do so.
The story of the Emu Wars is sad and stupid, and it goes to prove my point. The Australian government moved a bunch of humans into Emu country, where they didn’t used to be and arguably didn’t belong, and then, when the big birds just did what’s natural for them, in territory that’s been their home for millions of years, the humans who had invaded the Emus’ habitat in the first place, called on their government to help them kill as many Emus as they possibly could. And their government co-operated with their murderous goals, sending in the army to make asymmetrical war on the birds who had lived there since before humans ever set foot in Australia. Sad, stupid, and depressingly typical.
So, there was an African Painted Dog exhibit at the Pittsburgh Zoo. A mother held her two year old son up, over the railing, so he could get a better view.
Whoops, he slipped, and was quickly killed by the animals.
Huge controversy; negligent parent, versus negligence by the zoo. But the exhibit was closed and the dogs relocated to a different zoo.
Additional observation: canine rabies occurs in Colombia, and human deaths have occured, though it’s not common.
Ther’s nothing “oh so cute” about it and no, it doesn’t have any resonance with the Supreme Court. You’re either mocking me or creating connections where none exist, in a manner that sounds adjacent to schizophrenia…
In Pennsylvania there are black bears. They generally live their lives, not interacting with Pennsylvanians. I’ve seen a few, but most Pennsylvanians haven’t.
The few black bears that become a nuisance (damaging property, mostly) could easily be killed. Indeed, Pennsylvania has an hunting season for bears, designed to keep the population from becoming too large. Instead, they are trapped and relocated to less populated parts of the state.
OK, time for someone with a small bit of experience to weigh in. I was a zookeeper in 1964-65, and was assigned to the department that cared for sealions, polar bears, elephants, and hippos. Everyone was careful arouhde sealions (teeth!) and as for the polar bears, the big male (Moe) would stalk you and try to kill you as you cleaned the bear island. The elephants were lambs, too intelligent and sensitive, in my opinion; to be confined. This led to my dislike of zoos.
Now, hippos. Everyone was casual around them even after seeing Joanie (1000 lbs) charge Herman (1500+ lbs) and pick him up in her jaws and slam him against a wall. Herman was a scarred-up nervous wreck, and Joanie seemed to be, simply, nuts. After witnessing this, I became cautious, but I still had to go into the cage to clean.
So imagine a Colombian kid startling one of these in the forest. If I was local to the herd down there, I would beg a rifle and go shooting; I would be convinced that I was protecting my neighbors. Google says that about 500 Africans a year die, probably because they can’t afford rifles.
So if you want to advocate for the giant toothy invasive species the will kill you for just being in the wrong place, go ahead. Well, you say, they haven’t killed anyone in Colombia that we know of, so we should let them breed until there is a big population, and they have to spread out. For comparison, go to YouTube and search “wild baboons in Florida”. Your heart will positively bleed for these cuddly creatures.
It’s not about fault or punishing the hippos it’s about preserving the ecosystem. The official count is about 170, but some estimates place the number at closer to 200, and they are starting to displace local fauna, damaging farms, engangering humans, and there are fears the amount of dung they produce can make the waterways toxic. It turns out that area of the world is not prepared to handle a large number of hippos and there are estimates that by 2040 there may be as many as 1,400 hippos running around the area.
There are only so many practical ways to deal with hippos. They’re trying to sterilize the hippos, but it’s a dangerous, expensive, and slow moving process involving castrating males in the field. To control the population, they need to castrate at least 40 males each year, but that’s probably not a realistic goal. Relocating the hippos was an option back in 1993 after Escobar’s death, but they decided against it because it would be too dangerous, so with an estimated count of at least 170 today that ship has sailed.
I don’t relish the idea of killing a couple hundred hippos. But I don’t see any other realistic options for controling the population.