Posted on 02/17/2020 8:02:12 PM PST by robowombat
Pablo Escobar’s Hippo Herd Is Treating Colombia’s Lakes Like One Big Toilet They’re thriving, pooping, and fouling up the water around the drug lord’s former estate.
JESSICA LEIGH HESTER FEBRUARY 12, 2020
You can't easily spot the poop in the soupy green water, but it's definitely down there. You can't easily spot the poop in the soupy green water, but it's definitely down there. FICG.MX/CC BY 2.0 In This Story
PLACE Hacienda Nápoles
DESTINATION GUIDE Colombia PABLO ESCOBAR, THE LATE COLOMBIAN drug lord who founded the notoriously violent Medellín Cartel, had a thing for hippos. He once installed a quartet of them on his extravagant Colombian estate, Hacienda Nápoles, where they joined a lavish menagerie. When Escobar was killed in 1993, the other creatures were schlepped off to zoos, but the huge hippos were deemed too unruly to wrangle. Free to roam, the four multiplied into dozens that have been ambling around the Magdalena River Basin ever since. They’ve been spotted more than 90 miles from Escobar’s estate, leaving prodigious droppings all the way.
The hippopotamus is native to sub-Saharan Africa and grazes on land but spends most of its life in water, and treats rivers and lakes as big toilets. Each year, a single hippo can dump more than 1,650 pounds of carbon and other nutrients into the water—and it does so mainly by pooping, says Jonathan Shurin, an ecologist at the University of California, San Diego.
A few years ago, Shurin started wondering what all that poop was doing to a smattering of small lakes on Escobar’s old estate in northwestern Colombia. To figure it out, he and his collaborators needed to get close. The poop doesn’t stink up the air, Shurin says, and “the lakes are all pretty green and soupy” to begin with.
Send steve irwin’s progeny.
Saw something about those hippos some time ago. Given that they’re absolutely not native to South America there’s no reason why they can’t be shot.
Exactly. Invasive? Bang! Someone will pay to eat them.
Except for the “let’s shoot a lot of guns near the drug lords” thing ... right?
They make good leopard bait.
Send in Don Jr. Feed everyone hippo burgers for a year!
They’d be right at home in San Franshitsco.
After searching for that .gif it is fortunate Escobar didn’t import rhinoceros.
Can hippos be bbq’d?
Maybe send them to Venezuela.
“If you shoot The Hippo, you must kill him!”
An enraged Hippo in the water would be very dangerous.
I believe they can run faster than the average human while on land.
Remember earlier this month with Jerry Nadler “raced” Adam Schiff to the podium? Everyone was shocked to see him ‘waddle’ so very swiftly. IOW, roly-poly animals can surprise you when they have a strong incentive to step on the gas!
Send the average Problem Glasses girl on Twitter to go and tell the drug lord this is NOT OK. Sure, she may not be seen again, but we can blame that on the hippos.
Hippos are the deadliest animals on earth. Please avoid them if you’re able.
Venezuelans
His favorite yuletide song — “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.”
The hippopotamus , the “river horse”, is one of the most aggressive animals in the world. They are extremely territorial and will attack anything that approaches them in water or gets between them and water.
Hippos kill about 2,900 people a year in Africa.
Somebody say hippos?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg8oZEiRCNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qoNPKyLbew
Who would have thought the “view” relocated their show
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