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The Colombian government has announced a raft of measures to control its growing population of invasive hippos—descendants of animals introduced to the country by the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Hippos are native to Africa, but in the 1980s, Escobar smuggled four of the animals into Colombia, keeping them at his luxurious country estate, Hacienda Nápoles, in the municipality of Puerto Triunfo—located east of Medellin—which featured a private zoo. As well as the hippos, the zoo housed numerous exotic creatures, including elephants, ostriches, rhinos, giraffes and zebras. Following the death of Escobar, who was killed by Colombian police during a...

Itamar Grossman, 13, was visiting the Sussita National Park, on the ruins of the ancient Hellenistic city of Hippos, when something on the ground caught his attention after he went to a vantage point with a cousin to take photos, according to a press release from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.That something turned out to be an ancient bronze ring.“It was a strange and ancient-looking ring,” Itamar said, according to All Israel News. “My brothers and cousins who were with me didn’t think it was anything old, just a ring someone had dropped.”Although his siblings and cousins didn’t think...

The sale of ivory from the tusks and teeth of five more species will be banned under government plans. The import, export and dealing of elephant ivory was banned in the UK last year. The animals that could join the list are killer whales, hippos, walruses, narwhals, and sperm whales. The creatures are hunted and killed for their ivory which is often used in decorative carvings. The government plans to extend the Ivory Act 2018 to include them. People found to be breaking the law can be given unlimited fines or be jailed for five years. Parliament must vote on...

Ron Dicker Thu, March 16, 2023 at 3:57 AM PDT·1 min read A lion stranded on a rock in a South African river was attacked by a massive hippo, prompting the big cat to frantically try to swim to safety. (Watch the video below.) Veteran guide Steyn Jacobsohn’s video of the encounter in Kruger National Park quickly went viral when it was posted this week on YouTube. “Guests always ask us what’s the rarest thing you’ve ever seen, and this is at the top, a very unique sight indeed,” Jacobsohn told the wildlife platform Latest Sightings. The clip begins with...

Two hippopotamuses at a zoo in Belgium have tested positive for COVID-19. Antwerp Zoo announced Friday that the country’s national veterinary lab confirmed two hippos contracted the disease and that the zoo would be closed until further notice, The Associated Press reported. The infections appeared in a 14-year-old hippo named Imani and a 41-year-old hippo named Hermien.

A group of hippos - an unwanted legacy following the death of notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar - are being sterilised. Escobar, who was shot dead by police in 1993, illegally imported exotic animals, including a male and a female hippo - dubbed the "cocaine hippos". Since then, a growing population has been taking over the countryside near his former ranch, Hacienda Nápoles. The Colombian government has so far sterilised 24 of more than 80 animals. They have been treated with a chemical that will make them infertile. Colombian environmentalists say the hippos, believed to be the biggest herd...

A wall painting (fresco) of Tyche, the Greek goddess of fortune, was exposed during the 11th season of excavation at the Sussita site, on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee, which was conducted by researchers of the University of Haifa. Another female figure was found during this season, of a maenad, one of the companions of the wine god Dionysus. "It is interesting to see that although the private residence in which two goddesses were found was in existence during the Byzantine period, when Christianity negated and eradicated idolatrous cults, one can still find clear evidence of earlier...

The 13th year of Haifa University's archeological digs at the Susita site just east of the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret) has yielded several surprises, including what experts believe is a portrait of a local man from the 3rd century CE, carved into a basalt gravestone. Susita – as it is known in the Aramaic version – was originally known by the Latin name Hippos. Both names refer to horses, although the reason for this name is not known. It was destroyed by the earthquake of 749 CE. Archeologist Dr. Michael Eisenberg explained that the "Susita man" rock was found in...

An unexpected discovery awaited a team of Israeli archaeologists in a drainage canal dating from roughly 2,000 years ago: an aluminum bottlecap. From a beer bottle. No, the good people of ancient Sussita weren't producing aluminum metal. The meaning of the startling discovery is that millennia after its construction, the drainage canal was still working, centuries after the city's final destruction by earthquake. Made of aluminum and feather-light, the bottle-cap floated on rainwater that washed into the canal, says Dr. Michael Eisenberg, head of an Israeli archaeological team digging the site. This canal, or less romantically -- a sewer, passed...

The archaeological sites of the ancient Roman Empire constitute without rival the most prolific array of ancient architecture and artifacts that can be attributed to any single civilization or culture. Its remains pockmark the Old World landscape from North Africa and Egypt to Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. The artifacts populate museums the world over. But comparatively rarely does one find the preserved footprint of an ancient Roman citizen. That is why excavators and archaeologists got excited when, while digging at the site of Hippos-Sussita (an ancient Hellenistic-Roman site just east of the Sea of Galilee in Israel), they came across...

Now referred to as the "Burnt Church," this structure was likely burned to the ground during a Sasanian conquest of Hippos in the beginning of the seventh century. (The Sasanian empire was the last Persian empire before the emergence of Islam). Its mosaic floors, however, were well preserved in the ash. The mosaic was very colorful and had two Greek inscriptions that describe the ancient church fathers, who built the church for a martyr named "Theodoros." The mosaic was also covered in geometric patterns, birds, fish, fruit and baskets. Some of the baskets were filled with loaves of bread and...

The name of the Roman emperor Maximinus Thrax, who ruled from 235 to 238 CE, was deciphered for the first time on a milestone which was used to mark ancient Roman roads, according to the latest study of the area of ​​ancient Sussita (Hippos) carried out by researchers from the University of Haifa. This is the first inscription that researchers have been able identify on the milestones marking the road from Susita east of the Sea of ​​Galilee to Banias (Panias, named after the god Pan) in the southern Golan Heights. According to Dr. Michael Eisenberg of the Institute of...

The rock carvings -- known as petroglyphs -- have been discovered in their thousands atop hillocks in the Konkan region of western Maharashtra. Mostly discovered in the Ratnagiri and Rajapur areas, a majority of the images etched on the rocky, flat hilltops remained unnoticed for thousands of years... animals, birds, human figures and geometrical designs are all depicted. The way the petroglyphs have been drawn, and their similarity to those found in other parts of the world, have led experts to believe that they were created in prehistoric times and are possibly among the oldest ever discovered. "Our first deduction...

Chang Ming Chuang, 66, was tracking the animal at a wildlife resort on Lake Naivasha, 90km (56 miles) north-west of the capital, Nairobi. A second Chinese tourist was injured in the attack. Six people have been killed by hippos in the area this year. High water levels have seen hippos - the world's deadliest large land mammal - stray on to resorts for pasture. Witnesses said the two tourists had come too close to the animal near the Sopa hotel.

A herd of hippopotamuses once owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar has been taking over the countryside near his former ranch - and no-one quite knows what to do with them. It was in 2007, 14 years after Escobar's death, that people in rural Antioquia, 200 miles north-west of Bogota, began phoning the Ministry of Environment to report sightings of a peculiar animal. "They found a creature in a river that they had never seen before, with small ears and a really big mouth," recalls Carlos Valderrama, from the charity Webconserva. He went to look, and found...

An army of crocodiles took on a herd of massive hippos -- although if you ask us, this fight doesn't seem quite fair. Check out the wild photos from the beastly battle... It's nature at it's most stunning -- and also it's most brutal. A herd of hippos was no match for this throng of hungry crocodiles that descended upon the unsuspecting beasts at the South Luangwa National Park in Eastern Zambia. See how the drama unfolded...

This is the cutest video I have seen in a long time. A little girl with huge eyes tells a story about monkeys, a witch and crocodiles. It's in French, but the subtitles makes it easy to follow. If you like little girls then you will fall in love this little darling. Here is the link to the video; Sweet Story Told By a Young Child

A breathtaking story by a little French girl named, Capucine. This little girl weaves a tale of baby monkeys lost in frighteningtrees, a witch, crocodiles, a tiger, a "popotamus", a lion, and even a "tremendously very bad mammoth". There are also magic powers and an orange ring, but sometimes, "something goes amiss".

One possibility that Dr. Harer ruled out is that of a chariot accident. "If he fell from a speeding chariot going at top speed you would have what we call a tumbling injury -- he'd go head over heels. He would break his neck. His back. His arms, legs. It wouldn't gouge a chunk out of his chest." Instead, at his Toronto lecture, Harer brought up another, more exotic possibility -- that Tut was killed by a hippo. It's not as far out an idea as it sounds, hippos are aggressive, quick and territorial animals, and there is an artefact...

KAMPALA: Anthrax has killed at least 30 hippopotamuses in a popular Ugandan game park that saw a similar outbreak six years ago, officials said Wednesday. Tom Okello, conservation area manager at Queen Elizabeth National Park, a much-visited safari destination, said 10 of the hulking semi-aquatic animals were found dead over one half-day period alone. "This was something that we had seen before, so I knew immediately that we had to get the blood samples tested," he said, recalling a 2004 outbreak that claimed around 300 hippos around a small lake in the park. "When anthrax is involved, the blood doesn't...