Posted on 02/17/2020 8:02:12 PM PST by robowombat
Pablo Escobars Hippo Herd Is Treating Colombias Lakes Like One Big Toilet Theyre thriving, pooping, and fouling up the water around the drug lords 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. Theyve been spotted more than 90 miles from Escobars 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 waterand 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 Escobars old estate in northwestern Colombia. To figure it out, he and his collaborators needed to get close. The poop doesnt stink up the air, Shurin says, and the lakes are all pretty green and soupy to begin with.
Border moat, stocked with hippos!
No way would hippopotamus taste like chicken. What it does taste like, I have no idea!
This is why we love FR... :D
Who cares?
Not our problem.
Better than sharks with friggin lasers on their heads!
Call the White House quick!
Oh, I thought it said “hippies.”
There’s no cleaning up after THEM. Look at what they did to Max Yager’s place.
What keeps African hippos from ruining the ecology of the rivers and lakes?.......................
‘In the words of author and hunter Peter Hathaway Capstick, It is my personal opinion that hippo meat is one of the finest of game foods The taste is mild, less than lamb and more than beef, slightly more marbled than usual venison. It tastes exactly like, well, hippo.’
Just shoot them and be done with it. They are an invasive species and they die by the thousands in Africa during droughts. They are
Not Endangered. Seems a simple enough way to Deal with this
Someone will pay to eat them.
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the chinese are preoccupied at moment
Hippos are the deadliest animals on earth. Please avoid them if youre able.
Maybe the people of Louisiana could revisit this for us?
Hippo Meat Nearly Became An American Food Staple
Imagine hippo road-kill...Mmmmm, hippo road kill, aughhhhh!
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