studiot Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 A report on research from the Royal Vetinary College posted in The Big Issue 15-21 july 2024, page 5 Quote Hippos can stay airborne for substantial periods of time. In this case substantial means 0.3 seconds. ... When trotting, their four feet soar over the savannah simultaneously up to 15% of the time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exchemist Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 2 hours ago, studiot said: A report on research from the Royal Vetinary College posted in The Big Issue 15-21 july 2024, page 5 .....at an altitude of up to 6 inches....😄 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studiot Posted July 18 Author Share Posted July 18 2 hours ago, exchemist said: .....at an altitude of up to 6 inches....😄 More soberly they are apparantly one of the most dangerous animals in Africa, killing an average of 500 humans per year, as compared with a tally of 22 for lions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sensei Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 25 minutes ago, studiot said: More soberly they are apparantly one of the most dangerous animals in Africa, killing an average of 500 humans per year, as compared with a tally of 22 for lions. A slightly misleading comparison, because not taking into account their populations. https://www.google.com/search?q=hippos+population "around 115,000 to 130,000" https://www.google.com/search?q=lion+population "between 23,000 and 39,000 lions" 130k / 23k = 5.6x more. So if lions had a similar population to hippos, they would have ~ 124. If you're fishing on a boat, it's much easier to inadvertently get too close to hippos than to lions in national park. Nice interactive maps with populations of these animals in each country: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hippo-population-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/lion-population-by-country BTW, "It has been estimated that about 1,000 people are killed by crocodiles each year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_attack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exchemist Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 3 hours ago, studiot said: More soberly they are apparantly one of the most dangerous animals in Africa, killing an average of 500 humans per year, as compared with a tally of 22 for lions. Not to mention being the closest living relative of the whale..............which sort of makes sense, once you have been told this............. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toucana Posted July 19 Share Posted July 19 One of the many oddities about the hippopotamus amphibious is that they can neither swim nor float in water: Quote 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. https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/hippo Here is a photo of a hippopotamus at rest in shallow water which I took myself a few years ago - coincidentally in the zoo at San Diego California. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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