Adult hippos weigh up to two tons, and sometimes more. The amount of (human) gore that will probably result is sure to be impressive. I want to sell tickets to your performance on pay-per-view. To call a hippo a "person" is probably about the worst insult the hippo could imagine!Īlso, to the hippy-dippy "conservationists" who are proposing mass sterilization of the Colombian hippos rather than culling them: I have news for you. I don't know if she's ever seen a hippo in the flesh, or been overly close to one, but allow me to assure her: in the wild, the average hippo regards the average human as a pest, a nuisance, and something to be removed with extreme prejudice whenever possible. Therefore, the news that a judge in Cincinnati, Ohio, has decided that hippos have "interested persons" status before the court is cause for a certain amount of hilarity. ( You'll find a number of videos of them on YouTube.) They're established, and they're going to stay that way. They'll retreat into the streams and jungle of Central America, and those looking for them will never find them all. Give it a century or two, and they might become apex predators in the Amazon River! They might have been controlled by culling the entire population in the first year or two after they made their escape. They'll take over the river systems throughout the country, and then spread further. It's an absolutely ideal environment for them, rich in food and with no natural predators whatsoever. Within five to ten years there'll be several hundred. Earlier this year, we noted a comment by a Colombian expert that " Efforts to castrate hippos are not as easy as you would think" (to which my response can only be: "No s***, Sherlock!!!").īy now, I'd guess there are well over a hundred living and breeding in Colombian rivers. A few days later, I noted the existence of the Colombian hippos, and how they were spreading into surrounding waterways.
I wrote about common misconceptions about them a few years ago. I know a fair amount about hippos, having had a few up-close-and-personal encounters with the critters. A government agency has started sterilizing some of the hippos, but there is a debate on what are the safest methods. They are advocating for some of the animals to be killed.
After his death in a 1993 shootout with authorities, the hippos were abandoned at the estate and left to thrive with no natural predators - their numbers have increased in the last eight years from 35 to somewhere between 65 and 80.Ī group of scientists has warned that the hippos pose a major threat to the area’s biodiversity and could lead to deadly encounters with humans. The “cocaine hippos” are descendants of animals that Escobar illegally imported to his Colombian ranch in the 1980s when he reigned over the country’s drug trade. But the order won’t carry any weight in Colombia where the hippos live, a legal expert said. The case involves a lawsuit against the Colombian government over whether to kill or sterilize the hippos whose numbers are growing at a fast pace and pose a threat to biodiversity.Īn animal rights groups is hailing the order as a milestone victory in the long-sought efforts to sway the US justice system to grant animals personhood status. The offspring of hippos once owned by Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar can be recognized as people or “interested persons” with legal rights in the US following a federal court order.
I'm still laughing after reading this report.