•The hippopotamus weighs up to 8,000 pounds, measures up to five feet tall at the shoulder and two and a half feet tall at the top of the leg, and is about fourteen feet long.

•The eyes and nostrils of the hippo are set high on top of the head allowing the hippo to lay submerged underwater for long periods of time yet keep watch of its surroundings.

•The nostrils have strong muscular valves that control their opening and closing and the upper lip is large enough to completely seal the mouth when underwater.

•Hippos feet consist of four digits enclosed in round hooves.

•The hippo walks with its belly just touching the ground, and swims easily with only the muzzle and eyes showing above the water.

•Yawning is a sign of aggression and when a hippo yawns its canine teeth can be seen. The canines, which resemble tusks, are each at least two feet long and weigh up to six pounds.

•There is fine hair all over the hippo's body and the tail is made up of very coarse hair.

•The hippo is a blue-gray color which is camouflage under water.

•Hippos skin has a thick layer of fat. Under the fat, there are pores which emit an oily, pink fluid that is referred to as pink sweat. This sweat lubricates the hippo's skin.

There was a time when hippos roamed most of Africa, from below the Sahara up to the Nile Delta, but now the hippopotamus is extinct north of Khartoum and south of the Zambezi river except in protected regions.

Hippos travel in groups of 20-100 and are led by the female members of the group. When they reach a destination, the males each reside in their own territory, while the females and juveniles live together inside the territories. Hippos spend most of the day submerged in water and they can remain underwater for up to four and a half minutes at a time. Either swimming, walking along the bottom of the water, or sunning themselves on a sandbar, hippos don't come on land to feed until night. Many hippos eat up to 100 pounds of food a night, and may travel up to twenty miles, at a pace of thirty miles per hour, to feed.

 

 

REPRODUCTION

A baby is born by the female between 210 and 255 days after mating takes place. At birth, the baby is about 3 feet long, 1 and 1/2 feet tall, and 60 pounds. Five minutes after birth, the baby hippo can already walk, run and swim and is expected to walk level with the mother's neck so that she can keep an eye on the youngster.

The hippos biggest threat is a human, closely followed by a lion, which occasionally jumps on the back of a hippo and kills it.

Hippos kill more than several hundred people a year but must be provoked or feel threatened in order to attack.

 

 

ENDANGERMENT FACTS

* Many years ago, hippo hides were commonly stripped and dried to make shields for Roman warriors.

* In the 18th century, hippo tusks were used by dentists to make artificial teeth. With the invention of porcelain enamel, however, that use was ended.

* Between 1988 and 1991, the exports of raw hippo ivory quadrupled.

* In 1994, an aerial census showed only 11,000 hippos in the same area of Zaire that 23,000 had lived in five years before.

* Currently, Keith Eltringham of Cambridge University estimates that there are only 157,000 hippos left in the world.

* While the hippopotamus is not listed as endangered, commercial trade of the hippopotamus is regulated by international law.

*The hippopotamus is still being hunted and deforestation is ruining their grazing land, making eventual hippo extinction likely.

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