![]() Although they don’t swim - Chapman noted they actually run on riverbeds - they are deceptively swift in the water. Up to 16 feet in length and 5 feet tall, weighing up to 4 tons, these beasts can reach speeds of 25 mph on land. “The river hippo is responsible for the most deaths in Africa,” Chapman said. That was wise, noted the zoo’s Chapman, who works with hippos. During one of his four trips to the area, Shurin was in a power boat observing hippos when the animals charged. Nor do they pose the same sort of danger - territorial animals, hippos have been known to rush people who stray too close. Swimming in the rivers are manatees, giant turtles, caimans.Īsian water buffaloes also have been imported, to work on the plantations that fuel the palm oil trade, but they don’t roam free like the hippos. ![]() Hot and humid, the mercury regularly climbing past 100 degrees, the land swarms with life: monkeys, macaws, iguanas. So he journeyed south to Hacienda Los Nápoles, about 80 miles outside Medellín, sitting in a valley on the edge of a tropical rain forest. “The closest thing to hippos in the Americas now are tapirs,” Shurin said. ![]()
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