Hippos' constant defecating turns African pools into communal guts
Hippopotamuses can eat nearly 100 pounds of food daily—and, as a result, they fill the pools where they spend much of their lives with huge amounts of poop.
Hippopotamuses can eat nearly 100 pounds of food daily—and, as a result, they fill the pools where they spend much of their lives with huge amounts of poop.
Plants & Animals
Dec 8, 2021
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73
Male hippopotamuses are an unusual size. Among mammals, males are usually much larger than females, but in hippos the sexes have surprisingly similar sized bodies. All except the jaws and tusks, which are much bigger in males.
Plants & Animals
Oct 11, 2021
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16
A fossil of an extinct species of hippo that is over one million years old has been discovered in Somerset by researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Leicester. This finding surpasses the ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Oct 4, 2021
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104
Hippopotamus aren't the first thing that come to mind when considering epidemiology and disease ecology. And yet these amphibious megafauna offered UC Santa Barbara ecologist Keenan Stears a window into the progression of ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 15, 2021
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4
A new study shows that the similarly smooth, nearly hairless skin of whales and hippopotamuses evolved independently. The work suggests that their last common ancestor was likely a land-dwelling mammal, uprooting current ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 1, 2021
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294
Tucked between mountain ranges, the sprawling palace of Pablo Escobar was home to kangaroos, giraffes, elephants and other exotic animals—a private zoo of illegally imported animals that was the greatest ostentation of ...
Ecology
Feb 9, 2021
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0
At dusk, the street lights flicker on around a city park, located not far from the Magdalena River in Colombia. An enormous figure emerges from the shadows. It lumbers forward, stopping to graze on the grass. The scene verges ...
Ecology
Feb 11, 2020
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69
Four hours east of Medellin in northern Colombia's Puerto Triunfo municipality, the sprawling hacienda constructed by infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar of "Narcos" fame has become a tourist attraction. When Escobar's empire ...
Ecology
Jan 29, 2020
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16
A new UNSW study has shown that using a drone to film hippos in Africa is an effective, affordable tool for conservationists to monitor the threatened species' population from a safe distance, particularly in remote and aquatic ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 10, 2019
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5
The excrement of hippos plays an important role in the ecosystem of African lakes and rivers. Because there are fewer and fewer hippos, this ecosystem is in danger. In the long term, this could lead to food shortages at Lake ...
Plants & Animals
May 1, 2019
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