Hippopotamus, one of the three largest herbivorous giants in the world, have an exaggeratedly large mouth and the most developed canine teeth in the world, and are ferocious and aggressive. It is the overlord of freshwater rivers and lakes in Africa, and even the famous Nile crocodile is often bullied by it. However, such a strong guy often only gets bitten by lions, so some netizens jokingly called it the "little angel bitten". What is going on?
Hippos are freshwater overlords & nibbling cherubs
Hippos and Nile crocodiles are neighbors in freshwater rivers and lakes across Africa. Hippos always bully crocodiles because of their size. We often see footage of hippos driving away crocodiles in documentaries. What's even more annoying is that hippos often interfere with crocodile hunting. Sometimes crocodiles attack zebras, wildebeests or antelopes crossing the river. They are about to succeed, but hippos rush up to cause trouble, and the prey is able to escape. Sometimes, hippos will guard the remains of their dead species to prevent crocodiles from eating them.
For the heroic deeds of the hippopotamus, many netizens praised the hippopotamus, saying that the hippopotamus has a sense of justice and cannot see the crocodile bullying the herbivores, giving the herbivores glory and making them angry.
Hippos drive away crocodiles
However, hippos’ big mouths, long teeth and violent tempers do not work well when faced with lions. In recent years, lions have been killing hippopotamuses in increasing numbers, and have been recorded in Masai Mara and Nabiro in Kenya, Kruger in South Africa, and the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
The fact that a lion hunts a hippopotamus is not the strangest thing in itself. What is even stranger is that judging from the pictures and videos, the hippopotamus barely resists when encountering a lion, and just sits and gnaws at it. The "little angel is being gnawed" That's why it got its name. Once, three female lions killed a hippopotamus mother and her baby on land. The baby hippopotamus resisted for a while, but the mother hippopotamus was almost killed by the neck and was eaten alive by the lions.
It doesn’t matter who the lioness attacks the hippo, the key is where
Hippos are usually attacked by lions on land, so wouldn’t it be bad if it stayed in the water all the time? Why do we have to go ashore? It turns out that although the hippopotamus lives in the water, it feeds on the grass on the shore. It hardly eats aquatic plants. Therefore, it must come to land in order to fill its stomach. When food is scarce during the dry season, hippos may search for food as far away as 4 kilometers from the waterfront.
If the hippopotamus only lives in one water body, it will forage around the water body; if it lives in two water bodies, it will forage on the land between the two water bodies. The strong sunlight during the day is very harmful to hippos' skin, so they choose to rest in the water during the day and land at night to find food. There is no sunlight at night, but there is something more terrifying than sunlight - lions.
Lions
Hippos have completely different habits in the water and on land. When it is foraging on land, it is solitary, going wherever there is food, and has no sense of territory. During the day, they gather in groups of as few as a few to as many as 150 individuals in the water, and they are extremely territorial. Both male and female hippos are territorial, but male hippos are more territorial, especially during the courtship period. Many young or old male hippos and their cubs are killed in territorial struggles.
Why do hippos only show territoriality in water? This is because fresh water is so important to hippos. Compared with other herbivores, hippopotamuses have a short colon and no cecum - the segment responsible for recycling water. Therefore, the hippo's water absorption efficiency is very low, and the water content of its feces is as high as 90%. It must replenish water at any time. In order to occupy a place in the water body, the hippopotamus will not hesitate to fight with any living creature, and its territorial awareness is especially strong during the dry season. The territoriality of hippos is the source of their aggression.
Hippos’ territorial struggle
Hippos drive away crocodiles and interfere with crocodile hunting because of their territorial nature. Hippos do not have a good heart to save weak herbivores, and they have no feelings for the corpses of their own kind. It only felt that the crocodile had invaded its territory, so it attacked the crocodile. However, it accidentally saved the weak and helpless herbivore and disturbed the crocodile's delicious meal.
Once, a group of African wild dogs forced an antelope into a puddle. When the antelope was desperate, a hippopotamus stepped forward and drove the wild dogs away. Just as the observers were praising the hippo, the hippo bit the antelope like crazy and shook it, pushing the antelope into the water and drowning it to death. It can be seen that all animals that enter the water are likely to be regarded as intruders by the hippopotamus and become the target of its attack, whether they are meat-eating or vegetarian.
Hippos interfere with crocodile hunting
Two estrous male hippos sometimes clear the area before a duel, and other hippos and crocodiles are the targets of the clearance. Both hippos and crocodiles like to bask in the sun, and sometimes hippos will take over the beach where crocodiles are basking. After all, hippos are huge and crocodiles cannot afford to offend them. Once they feel the strong hostility of hippos, they will choose to abandon this site.
The above is the reason why hippos have a tough attitude towards crocodiles. Hippos are very confident in the water. The encounters between hippos and lions are mainly on land. This is not the territory of hippos, but the territory of lions. Hippos also face the threat of water shortage, so they are very unsure of themselves.
When attacked by a lion, the hippo can only quickly escape into the water. Once the lion can prevent it from entering the water, its situation will be very dangerous. For example, in the example of three female lions killing a hippopotamus mother and child mentioned earlier, the hippopotamus mother and child were blocked on the bank for a night and were already exhausted and dehydrated. Therefore, when the lions attacked the next day, the hippopotamus mother and child had basically no ability to resist. .
Triangular restraint relationship between lions and hippos
Sometimes there is a triangular restraint relationship in nature. As for today’s topic, crocodiles can’t do anything to hippos, and hippos can’t do anything to lions.
The crocodile's mouth is flat. Compared with the hippopotamus with its big arms and thick waist, it has no place to lower its mouth at all, so it cannot exert its bite force no matter how strong it is. Crocodile teeth are not capable of cutting and chewing, so they can only swallow them whole. If they want to tear them apart, they can only perform a "death roll". But it couldn't even bite, so how could it roll over?
Hippopotamus and Nile Crocodiles
Crocodiles kill large prey, usually by drowning them in the water. This trick is very effective against terrestrial herbivores, not to mention wildebeests and antelopes. Even a nearly one-ton black rhinoceros was dragged into the water by a giant crocodile and drowned. But it won't work for hippos, because hippos live in water. It is good at diving. It can close its nostrils underwater to prevent water from entering. It can breathe every 3-5 minutes. It can also sleep underwater and automatically surface to breathe without waking up. In addition, crocodiles are much smaller than hippos, so it is almost impossible to drown a hippopotamus.
The hippo’s big mouth and long teeth look scary, but the gap between the teeth is too large, and the killing efficiency is far less than that of carnivores. It is only suitable for dealing with opponents about the same size as itself. In Masai Mara, a hippopotamus attacked a lioness, bit the lion's neck and threw her away. As a result, the lioness was fine and still alive and kicking. Because the lion's body slipped into the gap between the hippo's teeth, it was not stabbed by the thick lower canine teeth.
The actual bite effect of the hippopotamus’ big mouth and long teeth is limited
The most suitable targets for hippos to kill are males younger or older than themselves. Such opponents are large enough and can be suppressed. It is easy to bite after living, and its big teeth will exert great lethality at this time. A male hippopotamus was stabbed in the heart by an opponent during the civil war and died. The hippopotamus' big teeth were originally designed to fight for territory and mating rights. This design can satisfy the function, but it is unqualified for dealing with lions.
On the contrary, lions have many ways to deal with hippos. The hippopotamus has a big head and a thick neck, so it is not suitable for killing directly. However, it is very clumsy on land and cannot effectively kill a lion. The lion can slowly grind the hippopotamus to death. The way lions hunt hippos is by dragging them to prevent them from entering the water and biting their legs and hindquarters. Hippos often die from excessive blood loss. This is no longer a traditional cat hunting method, it is somewhat similar to the hunting methods of hyenas and jackals. Some hippos were lucky enough to escape from the lion's mouth, but were scratched and bruised all over their bodies, which was horrific.
A hippopotamus escapes from a lion's claws
On land, a lion alone would dare to attack a hippopotamus. Lions even dare to chase hippos into shallow water, and sometimes successfully kill them. Once, a male lion and a female lion chased a hippopotamus to the edge of a small river. The lioness went down to the river and fought with the hippopotamus for an hour and a half, but neither could do anything to the other.
Crocodiles are much better at defending against lions on land than hippos. The crocodile's armor can effectively defend against lion attacks, and its huge mouth is a great threat to the lion. The lion can only successfully kill the crocodile by biting off its neck or flipping it over and attacking its belly. This is very difficult for an inexperienced lion. Not an easy task. It is very dangerous for lions to encounter crocodiles in deep water. Some lions have been dragged underwater by crocodiles while crossing rivers and drowned.
Lions and crocodiles compete on land to understand their relationship scientifically
Lions kill hippopotamuses, more or less.
Research shows that lions are negatively selected against hippos, which means that lions usually do not choose hippos as hunting targets. Their favorite prey are bison, wildebeest, giraffes, zebras and antelopes. Scholars have studied the feeding habits of lions across Africa and found that the proportion of hippos in lion diets is either zero or very low (less than 2%). Moreover, most of the hippos preyed on are juveniles. For example, in Albert Park in Congo, 8 of the 42 hunts by lions were hippopotamuses, all of which were juveniles.
The lion hunts the baby hippopotamus, and the female hippopotamus is helpless
However, relatively speaking, the hippopotamus is obviously the most killed by lions among the herbivorous giants. In South Africa's Kruger Park, only 13 over-ton herbivorous giants were found killed by carnivores from 1954 to 2000. Most of them were hippopotamuses. Except for one killed by a spotted hyena, the others were all killed by lions. . Compared with elephants and rhinos, hippos are clumsier on land and suffer from lack of water. The defensive effect of hippopotamus tusks in actual combat is not as good as that of elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns. Hippopotamus skin is also relatively thin, so it is more likely to be attacked by lions. Hunt.
Lions usually take the initiative to avoid hippos, but once they get a handle on them and recognize their "paper tiger" nature, they will attack them more and more frequently. Some lion groups have developed a cultural tradition of feeding on hippos, such as the Noga brothers in the Masai Mara. The four brothers frequently hunt hippos. In the South Luguaan Park in Zambia, a lioness led a pride of one sub-adult male lion and seven sub-adult female lions and killed six hippos in a few months.
Lions hunt small hippos
Hippos and crocodiles are generally a very harmonious pair of neighbors. A large carnivore and a large herbivore live together, and There are almost no records of killing each other, and there is almost no second example of this in nature. The hippopotamus drove the crocodile away, but the crocodile only lost some face and did not suffer any substantial damage. There is currently no quantitative study on how hippos interfere with crocodile hunting. It should be very rare, and the impact on crocodiles is negligible.
The hippopotamus’ teeth are not only unsuitable for dealing with lions, but also for dealing with crocodiles. It is difficult for a hippopotamus to bite a crocodile. So far, there is no definite record of a hippopotamus killing a crocodile. Scholar Cote once reported that a crocodile was bitten in two by a hippopotamus. This is the source of similar claims in some documentaries. However, this is not a direct observation, but a speculation based on the discovery of a crocodile carcass on the shore. Today, it seems that such wounds cannot be caused by a hippopotamus.
Crocodiles cannot harm healthy adult hippos, but they are a threat to young or injured hippos. Some lone hippopotamus calves will be hunted by crocodiles, so female hippos usually do not allow crocodiles to get too close to their calves and will resolutely drive them away until the crocodiles are forced to completely abandon the waters where hippos breed. In Uganda, an adult male hippopotamus was seriously injured in a fight and was targeted by crocodiles. He had to take shelter in the reeds on the shore. When he returned to the water, he was surrounded and hunted by a group of crocodiles.
Crocodile hunts baby hippopotamus
Crocodile is an animal with a long growth cycle. It is very small when it first reaches adulthood and gets bigger as it grows. Female Nile crocodiles reach adulthood at 2.5 meters, and male Nile crocodiles reach adulthood at 2.8 meters. Landlord male crocodiles are usually 4 meters tall. When hippos bully crocodiles, they also "treat the crocodiles." Studies have shown that when hippos drive crocodiles away from the beach, they will first pick the small crocodiles to avoid the landlord male crocodiles and save some face for the big crocodiles. And when all the small crocodiles are driven away, the big crocodile will leave on its own and give the hippopotamus face.
Giant Nile crocodiles can exceed 5 meters or even reach 6 meters (weighing about one ton). These giant crocodiles can already pose a threat to ordinary adult hippos. There is a legendary giant crocodile named Gustav, which is said to be 5.5 meters long and weigh 600-700 kilograms. Its attitude towards hippos is very different from ordinary crocodiles. It seems that it is not afraid of hippos at all. It lingered near a herd of hippos, causing the hippos to become so nervous that they hurriedly gathered to protect the young.
The peaceful place between crocodiles and hippos
In general, lions are definitely a far greater threat to hippos than crocodiles. Hippos can keep crocodiles out of their breeding grounds, but they can't keep lions away, so they ask their good neighbors, crocodiles, for help. In the Luangwa River, hippos usually place their nurseries on the sandbar in the middle of the river. Lions will try to wade across the river and enter the sandbar to prey on the young hippos. The presence of crocodiles in the river makes lions wary of going into the river, thus indirectly protecting the little hippopotamus.