Not really. They have been shown to be omnivores.
TIL. Thanks!
Well, that’s creepy as hell.
How long do those things live?
Longer than you can keep running. 
TIL while try to research a smart-ass response:
Hippos can run on land at about 20 mph. So don’t try to outrun them. But they can only maintain that pace for a short distance.
Surprisingly, hippos cannot swim. They are too dense to float. While in the water they just walk along the bottom.
They can run underwater at 5 mph. So if you are on land and a hippos is chasing you underwater, you can outrun him, but you’d better move at a pace faster than a walk.
Thus allowing them to sneak up on a small watercraft, unseen, and erupt right under it, overturning its occupants into the water with them.
And you’re dead.
And, as I said before, bitten in half. Hungry hungry hippos
I’d want revenge too if I got tranqed and woke up with a vasectomy
Cite for the fact that they neither swim nor float? They certainly gave an excellent impression of both when I saw them in Botswana.
Yeah, I think they swim. It’s kinda graceful seeing a hippo move under water(not that I’ve swam with them, I’ve seen it on wildlife shows)
They float, how do you think their eyes and nostrils are right at water level, in the middle of a huge river?
Hippos are very dense and sink to the bottom where they push off with their powerful legs and slowly bob up and down. Since they can hold their breath for five minutes they have plenty of time to walk or bob to shallower water before there’s any risk of drowning.
From National Geographic
Hippos cannot swim or breathe underwater, and unlike most mammals they are so dense that they cannot float. Instead, they walk or run along the bottom of the riverbed.
From the San Diego Zoo:
Yet despite all these adaptations for life in the water, hippos can’t swim—they can’t even float! Their bodies are far too dense to float, so they move around by pushing off from the bottom of the river or simply walking along the riverbed in a slow-motion gallop, lightly touching the bottom with their toes, which are slightly webbed, like aquatic ballet dancers.
From Snopes:
These so-called “river horses” spend the majority of their lives in slow-moving bodies of water. However, despite that fact, they can neither swim nor float.
I think you unwittingly hit on it when you said “They certainly gave an excellent impression of both”. As Elmer_J.Fudd says, they push off the bottom to rise to the surface, take a breath, then sink back down to the bottom. They give the impression of swimming but they’re basically just bouncing up and down in the water. Or wading in the shallow water.
Oh, now I understand. It does appear they’re swimming, you have to admit.
Like a extra large dog paddle kinda swimming.
Thanks. I knew about the bottom-walking, but I hadn’t realized they couldn’t float, and they do move through water by the force of their limbs: just not by pushing against the water directly. I never thought about what “swim” does and doesn’t mean.
We as a society in the lower 48 United States nearly hunted the grey wolf to near extinction by the mid 1930’s, for no other purpose than to protect people, our livestock and big game for hunting.
The wolf population in the lower 48 is still only in the 1,000’s. With most in Minnesoat and Idaho. Colorado just recently re-introduced the wolf to public lands there with the total population less than 20, and ranchers are already crying foul due to livestock losses.
Hippos are more closely related to cetaceans than they are to any land-based animals.
Wow. Two TILs for me in one thread.
Hippos, Colombia, Escobar, and management efforts, all in one interesting article in The Guardian this morning:
Dan
I thought Hungry Hungry Hippos ate Marbles. Huh. Learn something new every day on the Dope. 