- Everyone’s favorite gentle giant is in reality everything but.
“I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.”
Kid, let me tell you — you either know nothing about hippos or you’re dumber than a sack of bricks.
In the popular imagination, hippos are often seen as these lazy, rotund river potatoes. At worst, they might come creepily strutting out of a river and sing about how they like ‘em chunky.
But in reality, they are much, much worse. They are hyperviolent, filthy beasts.
In fact, we’re going so far as to say that hippos are complete bull****. Here are all the reasons why.
The Way Hippos Poop is Really Gross
Let’s start with the most obviously gross thing about hippos — their poop. Poop is always disgusting, but hippos manage to take it to a whole other level.
Specifically, though, it’s not about the poop itself — it’s what the hippos do with it.
Most other forms of life simply let their feces fall to the ground. But when a hippo decides to take a dump, it engages in what is known as “muck-spreading.”
When a hippo poops, it begins to spin its tail with great force. As each turd comes out, **** literally hits the fan.
The resulting mess can only be described as a crap tornado. It ends up on the hippo itself and every other thing and animal in the immediate vicinity.
Sometimes, the hippo will even urinate at the same time to help the poop fly further.
According to people who have gotten closer to this event than we would ever want to, muck-spreading is how hippos mark their territory. In a way, it makes sense — we sure would stay as far away from that as possible.
Hippo Feces Turn Rivers into Lifeless Toilet Bowls
Not only is hippos’ poop gross. It’s also basically a biological weapon.
As you know, hippos like to live in water. They don’t bother to get out of the river or pool to go to the bathroom, so their feces end up on the bottom of the water.
But the thing is hippos poop a lot — they squeeze out up to 400 pounds of excrement per day. And they like to live in herds.
So, there’s a lot of crap in the water. And once it begins to decompose, it kills everything.
The rotting feces can consume all the oxygen in the water, killing fish, plants, and anything else that lives in it. Soon, the hippo herd is floating around in a stinking, and lifeless toilet bowl that may never recover.
Hippos Ooze a Stinking Goo
Although hippos spend a lot of time in their rancid pools, they aren’t strictly aquatic. Sometimes they venture out onto land, but there a problem awaits them.
Hippos live in Africa, and Africa gets hot. Unfortunately, hippos aren’t able to sweat. So, how do they keep themselves cool?
Well, they do sweat — kind of. But the stuff they excrete isn’t sweat but a thick ooze that covers the hippo entirely.
Imagine covering yourself in that slime that Nickelodeon used to make. That’s a pretty accurate approximation if you want to cosplay a hippo.
You’ll just be missing the horrible stench.
Also, the hippo goo isn’t green. It dries red, leaving the hippo looking like it had just bathed in blood.
Hippos are Baby Killers
But if you see a red-painted hippo, it may not be covered in just its own “sweat.” Chances are, the beast is actually caked in blood because hippos are violently territorial psychos.
They will mess up anything that wanders into their territory, be it a lion, crocodile, or rhino. And they also kill their own babies.
You see, in a hippo herd, one male claims the right to mate with the females. And once a lady hippo gives birth, she takes the baby away from the herd.
The baby has a better chance of survival facing the lions and other hunters. The herd’s alpha would probably just kill it so he could mate with the mother again.
But if the baby gets old enough and it returns to the herd, it had better hope the old alpha is still in charge. If not, the new big boss will very likely slaughter the other male’s offspring on sight.
Hippos Want You Dead
But it’s not just some of the most dangerous predators on the planet and their babies that hippos want to kill.
You’re on their hit list, too.
As we said, hippos don’t tolerate anything encroaching on their territory, and that includes humans. The hippo is the single deadliest animal in Africa, responsible for roughly 500 deaths every year.
They don’t only attack lone wanderers, either. In one case from 2014, an enraged hippo capsized a boat and killed 13 people — 12 of them children.
Some conservationists suggest that a lot of the deaths are people’s own fault for going into hippos’ territory. But here’s the thing — water isn’t exactly a plentiful resource in parts of Africa.
So, if people want water, they have to go to the hippo-infested river. There’s simply no other place to get water from.
Basically, you have a choice — you can die of thirst or you can risk getting gored by a hippo. Have fun.
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