Heavy rains that began in October caused Lake Naivasha to swell to its largest size in nearly a century, flooding the land upon which hundreds of hippos had grazed. And the number of fishermen—once in the dozens, perhaps a few hundred at most—swelled into the thousands after the global economic crisis caused by the COVID pandemic hit the region. Kenya is the fourth-largest flower exporter in the world, but when the pandemic hit, Europeans stopped buying them.
Thousands of flower workers around Lake Naivasha were let go. With few other sources of income, many turned to fishing. Naivasha has long been a place where humans and wildlife converge.
Meanwhile, hundreds, maybe thousands, of hippos bathe near the shore, pressed up against the submerged fences of the now-flooded flower farms, homes, and tourist cabins. The result is a deadly mix: humans and hippos competing over a thin strip of territory. Nature is reclaiming Naivasha, and the result has led to dangerous melees—ones that humans do not win.
Ruth Mumbi lost her husband when a hippo overturned his fishing boat four years ago. The lake has no outlet. Each year, about six feet of water evaporates from its surface into the sunny sky.
A decade ago, after a series of droughts, residents feared the lake might disappear, taking an entire ecosystem and the tourism industry down with it. The rainy seasons were also wetter than usual. More rainfall brought increased cloud cover, reducing evaporation from the lake.
Naivasha is not alone. People built houses, tourist cabins, and even greenhouses on this land, but now many of these structures are underwater.
The lakeside town of Kihoto, for example, drowned last year. Today, walls of concrete blocks jut up above the dark waters. Several miles west, the curved tops of flooded greenhouses mark where flower farms have been swallowed. If the lake keeps growing, more buildings will submerge. A trove of common carp escaped into the lake, where they ate up most the crayfish and ravished the eggs of the tilapia, black bass, and other species prized by sport fishers.
The carp multiplied, and fishing became a livelihood. When Lake Naivasha suddenly expanded in , it seemed at first like a boon to the fishing industry. Fish bred in the rich, untouched soil of newly inundated riparian land. They grew into thousands of pounds of fresh food—more fish than anyone can remember.
Now, on the southwestern shore, Karagita boat landing is overrun each morning with fishermen unloading their catches. Teenage boys are paid pennies to repair old nets that have been tangled or cut by a propeller. And each day, tourists arrive at the landing and hire boat captains to take them on hippo tours. Early one morning, a captain named Douglas Mokano puttered toward a pod of hippos. Watch: Is this hippo in Botswana grieving the loss of her baby?
Despite their girth, they manage to squeeze together so tightly that a pod of five hippos looks like a single blob of grey and pink flesh. Kenya Wildlife Service has been unable or unwilling to put a stop to the illegal fishing.
The agency did not respond to repeated requests for comment. One night when they tried to arrest a group of fishermen, the fishermen fought back. They tied up the rangers, overturned their boat, and set it on fire, stranding the rangers until they could be rescued. Scientists estimate that between 29 and 87 percent of hippo attacks are fatal. Though hippos are herbivores, when grass is hard to come by, on rare occasion s they have been known to eat other animals— even deceased hippos.
Kilo has witnessed or investigated eight attacks in which fishermen died. Attacks have become so common that he has transformed his car into a makeshift rescue vehicle, removing the back seats so victims can be loaded easily and laying down plastic to catch the blood. But Kilo is no EMT. Wabomba treats an average of one or two hippo victims each week. Hippos can trample victims or drag them. Related: Delayed treatment and antivenom shortages put tens of thousands in Africa at risk of dying from snakebites.
Wabomba estimates that 40 percent of the hippo victims he sees ultimately die. This is what we call damage-control surgery.
Driving his Land Cruiser across one of them on a recent afternoon, he stopped to watch a lone hippo resting in a shallow pool of mud. Hippos give birth underwater because it is safest there. This is of course in shallow waters. After birth, the cow and calf hippos stay in water full time for up to 14 days, without going out to graze.
A hippo secretes some natural chemicals to protect its bare skin from the tropical sun. These two secretions are of hipposudoric acid and norhipposurdic acid. Combined, these two chemicals are what is commonly referred to as blood sweat.
Besides absorbing ultraviolet light from the sun, they also inhibit bacteria - thus preventing diseases. A hippopotamus can live for 40 - 50 years. To put this in context, this is more than 4 times the average lifespan of a lion. A hippopotamus moves in water by using its feet to propel itself forward.
A hippo's body is well adapted to move in water with ease. The facial features such as the eyes and nostrils are placed on the top of the head to allow for total immersion except for the eyes and nostrils. While Hippos spend an average of 15 hours a day in the water, they do not breathe when underwater.
Hippos can hold their breath for more than 5 minutes when fully submerged. They close their nostrils when they are submerged underwater. Like with many animals in the jungle, fighting is the way to resolve issues.
A dominant male hippo in a group herd will sometimes fight with other males that are disrespecting his authority or invading his groups' territory. In most zoos around the world, hippos are fed hay, alfalfa, herbivore mixes, and some watermelon. While they do not have watermelons in the wild, zoo hippos like watermelon. In a one to one face-off, a hippo could end the lion's life in a couple of minutes.
Lions do however manage to kill a hippo by attacking it as an entire pride of several individuals. This is rare, as even the lions know the risk involved and won't go after a hippo when they can grab an easy antelope for that day's meal. Under rare circumstances, a crocodile will attack a young hippo calf. This is because hippos are stronger than crocodiles and can crush a crocodile with just one bite.
Even if a crocodile were to attack a young calf, calves are always in the company of their mothers. Hippos are aggressive and highly unpredictable. This is why they are considered Africa's most dangerous mammal. They are even more dangerous when their young calves are involved. A hippopotamus' yawn or laugh is a serious warning signal, and there is nothing cute about it - much as it might seem so. Of all the wild animals in Africa, the hippo is regarded as the most dangerous to both humans and other animals.
It is said that hippos kill more than people every year. This is an average of 3 people every two days. Most of these deaths result from invading the hippos territory or as they are trying to protect their young ones. This is because if the circumstances threatening the survival of the hippopotamus don't improve, it will become endangered. Eastern and Southern Africa countries represent a conservation stronghold for hippos.
There are only two species of the Hippopotamus. The pygmy hippopotamus and the Common hippopotamus. There were other species of the hippo in various parts of the world especially Europe but are all extinct from thousands of years ago. While many carnivores even birds can eat a hippo's meat, very few can actually kill a hippo on their own. Since a single bite from a hippo can crush a lion as if it is nothing, lions can only hunt a hippo in a bigger group.
Besides lions, the Spotted Hyena and the Nile crocodile are the other predators for hippopotamuses. Due to the size and aggression, adult hippos are rarely preyed on and the predators only target the young calves.
Hippos are regarded as vulnerable species because the threats to their survival need to be improved before hippos become endangered and head on from there to extinction. Among the Threats to the survival of hippos, are: Hunting, political unrest and war, Dams and water management, Drought, Habitat loss to agriculture and urban development.
Hippos help the environment by fertilizing the water with their dung. Their dung is full of nutrients that enable the growth of organisms that act as food for fish. On land, they help clear up vegetation around the wetlands - which allows the ecosystem to sustain all its members. Hippos are found in many African countries with a suitable wetland habitat.
Most countries below the Sahara desert have hippos. Hello, Surprise. Hello, Storm. She is most worried about Blackface, a cantankerous female guarding an 8- month-old calf that is nuzzled against her at the edge of the huddle. Blackface bares her enormous teeth, and Paolillo tenses. And Jean has been charged with murder.
In , she abandoned a career in journalism to train as a casino croupier, a trade that would allow her to travel the world. In Zimbabwe, she became a safari guide.
She married Jean, a French geologist, in , and joined him when he took a job with a mining company searching for gold. They found none. But when Karen learned that poachers were killing hippos near their base camp, she vowed to help the animals. On the other side of the stream, Tacha, a young female, edges toward Storm, an 8-year-old male that Robin tolerates as long as he remains subservient. Tacha dips her face in front of Storm and begins to blow bubbles through the water, a hippo flirtation.
Storm faces Tacha and lowers his mouth into the water, letting Tacha know that he welcomes her advances. But Blackface maneuvers her own body between the young lovers and pushes Storm, who happens to be her grandson, to the back of the huddle. As if to assert his dominance, Robin immediately mounts Tacha and mates with her. To many, the hippo is a comical creature. In the Walt Disney cartoon Fantasia , a troupe of hippo ballerinas in tiny tutus performs gravity-defying classical dance with lecherous male alligators.
Although accurate numbers are hard to come by, lore has it that hippos kill more people each year than lions, elephants, leopards, buffaloes and rhinos combined. Hippo pods are led by dominant males, which can weigh 6, pounds or more. Females and most other males weigh between 3, and 4, pounds, and all live about 40 years. Bachelor males graze alone, not strong enough to defend a harem, which can include as many as 20 females. At night hippos emerge and eat from 50 to pounds of vegetation. Hippos can be testy and brutal when it comes to defending their territory and their young.