Hippopotami live with a bad rap. They are quite docile and not overly aggressive. Things get ugly if you piss one off, like this fellow above, but if you don’t bother them, they lounge about in their pool like over sized ancient Romans in the spa. Bodily contact appears to be an important sensation as the pool is large but the hippos are all in one part so close together that the ones in the middle can not get out. The day passes slow for a hippo with nothing to do but wallow.
Hippo Pool
There is a symphony of sound coming from the hippo pool. Grunts, puffs, burbs, farts, huffs, squeals and growls.
Hippos emerge from the pool at night to feed. Sometimes they will walk far to graze. In Botswana, we see darker shapes against the dark sky munching.
Pat tells us that hippos share some similar DNA with whales. I believe this as one hippo we spot is jumping up out of the water and performing a breaching like splash back into the water. Most whale like.
Whale-like Hippo
interesting indeed!