Moh-lay Not Like the Blind Animal

The Common Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) can be found in the lakes, swamps and boring-flowing rivers of West, Central, Due east and Due south Africa. They tin can weigh as much as three and a half tons and their 'hibernate' (skin) can weigh up to half a ton alone. The Common Hippopotamus tin can measure upwardly to 13 feet long (twice equally long as a very alpine man) and five anxiety tall.

Mutual Hippo Characteristics

The Common Hippopotamus has a plump, bulky torso which balances on four short stumpy legs. These 'stumpy' legs are quite versatile. Each hippo foot has four toes and although they are webbed, for water usage, they are evenly sprayed enough to support the hippo when it is on state.

A hippos skin is unremarkably greyish-brown and is completely hairless, apart from a few bristles around its mouth and tail-end. Although the hippo has no sweat glands in the skin (like a sus scrofa), they take special glands that produce a red fluid. This ruby fluid protects their skin from the sun and from infections, although they do rely heavily on cool h2o and mud to prevent over-heating and dehydration. The production of this fluid increases rapidly when the hippo is excited.

The hippo has a head shaped like a huge cage (female heads are slightly smaller). A hippos small eyes, little ears and nostrils are placed high upon their heads – this enables the hippo to odor, run across and breath while most of its torso is submerged under the water.

Although hippos cannot swim because their bodies are too dense to float, they spend most of the twenty-four hours in the water. Hippos can stay underneath the water for about 6 minutes at a fourth dimension – to exercise this they have a deep breath and close off their ears and nostrils. Every bit hippos cannot swim, they move around by pushing their feet off the riverbed and gallop around the bottom of the river in a surprisingly graceful fashion which could resemble a ballet dancer.

Hippo'due south huge mouths consist of lips that are 2 feet wide and teeth that tin seize with teeth a 10 human foot crocodile in half. Hippos can open their mouths to a massive 150 degrees or iv feet wide which bear witness their large tusk-like canines and razor-sharp incisors, capable of bitter a pocket-size gunkhole in half.

Common Hippopotamus Behaviour

Believe it or non, these large, docile looking animals are really very aggressive. Despite their size, hippos can out-run a man and can attain speeds of thirty miles per hour. Hippos accept developed some well known rituals to show aggression – the big 'yawn' does not mean hippo is tired, information technology is one of their most ambitious forms and shows confrontation in the water. Basically, being unpredictable, anything that gets in their way volition be bitten or trampled.

Here are some more common aggressive rituals of the Common Hippo:

Dung showering – they apply their tails to paddle the dung to show dominance – ordinarily done past bulls (male hippos).
Rearing, lunging and jaw-clashing.
Facing assaulter with oral fissure open – generally done by a defensive female when protecting her young.

Other sounds and actions displaying assailment are:

Water-scooping, caput shaking, charging and chasing.
Grunting, roaring and exhaling explosively above or below the h2o.

Male person hippos too have a submissive behaviour – hither are some examples:

Approaching in a crouched position – head low – this is an act of a subordinate male (1 who has less dominance) to a ascendant male.
Lying prone (depression, with face down) on land – this usually occurs when the male hippo is a threat of agonizing a calf nursery – they can escape the wrath of the female by laying prone

Hippos are gregarious animals which ways they move around in groups, enjoying company of others. Hippos live in herds of 10 – xl individuals, however, herds of 100 or more hippos accept been observed. The dominant male is the only one allowed to mate with the females of the herd, although sometimes he will permit a subordinate male to mate.

The dominant hippo males territory is well marked with his dung. The effective scent of the dung warns off other male hippos who might try and invade his territory. Sometimes fights can ensue when the territory is threatened by a rival hippo resulting in injury and sometimes death.

Hippos are not susceptible to disease therefore in suitable habitats and conditions their numbers can increase speedily. A hippos but predators are other hippos and unfortunately human being beings who hunt them for their hides, tusks and for meat.

The bellowing of a bull hippo measures an ear-splitting 115 decibels and sounds like the roar of a lion.

Common Hippopotamus Diet

Although hippos have very sharp teeth and are very big animals, they are in fact herbivores which means they do non swallow meat, but plants. Hippos may stay in the waters all 24-hour interval, however, at nighttime they come out of the lakes, swamps and ponds and caput for the grass to graze.

They are amazingly agile animals and good climbers for their size. At dark they will climb steep banks to graze on grass. They tin get through around 100 pounds of grass in ane night. This grazing goes on for most of the nighttime, then, before sunrise, they head back into the waters and swamps to assimilate their food and for another twenty-four hours of lazing beneath the waters surface.

Common Hippopotamus Reproduction

Male person hippos are about 7 years quondam and females nigh 9 years erstwhile when they become ready to mate. Hippo mating ordinarily happens within the dry seasons when most of the hippos have congregated around water sources. Mating usually takes identify under the water. The female hippo will carry her baby for most 240 days. When the time comes to requite nascency, she will separate from the herd and isolate herself.

One unmarried dogie is born, usually underwater and female parent and calf volition stay together away from the herd for betwixt 10 – 44 days. The mother hippo volition nudge her calf to the surface of the water to take hold of its showtime breath and and so the calf will accept a breath, close its nostrils, fold its ears and submerge to nurse on its female parent.

A female hippo will requite nascence to a single calf every 2 years. Calves are usually built-in in the rainy season and weigh virtually 93 pounds at birth. Calves will begin to eat grass at about 3 weeks old, yet, it will continue to nurse from its mother for about a year. Serious grazing at night begins at effectually 5 months one-time. Calves stay shut to their mothers for protection, not only from crocodiles and lions, but from male hippos who oddly enough do not bother with the calves on land but can attack young males in the h2o.

On state, the calves can also exist trampled on by the male hippos during chasing, fighting and stampedes. If a male person hippo comes near the young, a female parent hippo volition mob the male hippo who will then lay depression and still to let her know he meant no harm. It is unsure why the male hippos attack the young male hippos, maybe because they are male and are seen as a threat. Almost often, nurseries are adult containing many pocket-sized calves who are protected by one – 7 cows while the other mothers become and graze.

Mutual Hippopotamus Conservation Status

Hippo populations across the continent are threatened by habitat loss and unregulated hunting. The hippopotamus has been moved on to the so-called Ruddy List drawn upwards by the Earth Conservation Union (IUCN) in May 2006. This signifies that the mutual hippopotamus is now in serious danger of extinction.

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Damaris Hoster