61. Days 16, 17 & 20 (Aug 31, Sep 1 & 4) – Hippopotamuses

For those of us of a certain age and comedic bent, the thought of a hippopotamus brings the mind the song by Flanders & Swann (Google them if you don’t know them) called The Hippopotamus Song and which features the refrain:

Mud, mud, glorious mud,
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.
So follow me, follow, down to the hollow
And here let us wallow in glorious mud.

(If you Google the song you can hear several performances of it by Flanders & Swann including one where they cajole the audience into performing the refrain and then berate them when they mess it up.  This particular performance is even better in video but while I own an old video tape of them, I haven’t been able to find either a link to the video or a means of purchasing it.  And if I were to post it, it would be a violation of copyright (and You Tube would probably do all sorts of ugly things to me).)

It is true that hippos love to wallow in mud.  Or at least they seemed to part of the time we saw them.  These ones were in Chobe National Park in Botswana.

Hippos in the Mud

Notice the two birds in the field above the head of the hippo on the right.  It reminds me of a very bad pun (which shouldn’t surprise those of you who really know me).  It’s a birthday card with a picture of a hippopotamus, a bird, and two female sheep.  “Hippo-birdie-two-ewes”  For those of you slow on the uptake, just remember the opening line of the song sung (too often at a dirge-like pace) for a birthday. 

OK – that’s probably the worst you’ll get for this entire blog.  And to try to make it better, here’s a video of the hippos wallowing in the mud.  Not much movement on the part of the hippos except that one twirls its ear and one gets up and move around a little.  Watch the birds in this video as well.

And one last close-up of a hippo in the mud before we move on to hippos doing other things.

Hippo in Mud - Close Up

As I noted, these photos were taken in Chobe National Park on Day 20 of our trip.  But we had seen hippos earlier in the trip, on game drives in Manyeleti Game Reserve.  

Of course, sometimes you have to know what you’re looking for.  Hippos love to lie in ponds and lakes with almost nothing showing – such that you might almost consider them as rock outcropping in the pond, as shown in these two photos.

A Rock or a Hippo?

A Rock or a Hippo?

Of course, depending on what part of the hippo is sticking out of the water, you can sometimes tell without much effort that you’re not looking at a rock.

Top of Hippo's Head (Definitely Not a Rock)

When the hippo is in the water, it will often slowly rise until a significant part of it is out of the water and then sink back down under the water.  They can stay underwater for periods up to 5 minutes before needing to resurface.

Hippo Surfacing

The word hippopotamus comes to us from the ancient Greek and means river horse, noting how much of this animal’s life is connected to the water.  It tends to remain in water most of the day, emerging at night to eat, primarily on grass.  And while it is the third largest terrestrial based animal after the elephant and rhinoceros, its closest living relatives are marine – whales and porpoises.  The average male is 3,300 pounds and female 2,900 pounds.

As can be expected of an animal of that size, even from a far distance they are visible.  

Hippos from Afar

And closer up they are really magnificent looking animals.

Hippo Close Up

Next up: Monkeys and mongooses