Hippopotomology (HIPPOS) with Rebecca Lewison

Summary

Ologies with Alie Ward: Hippopotomology (HIPPOS) with Dr. Rebecca Lewison

Release Date: February 5, 2025

In this captivating episode of Ologies with Alie Ward, host Alie Ward delves deep into the fascinating world of hippos with guest Dr. Rebecca Lewison, a renowned hippopotamologist and professor of biology at San Diego State University. Together, they explore the intricate biology, behavior, and conservation challenges facing these majestic yet misunderstood creatures.

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Introduction to Hippopotomology

The episode kicks off with Alie Ward humorously recounting a kitchen mishap involving fish soup, setting a light-hearted tone for the deep dive into hippos. She introduces Dr. Rebecca Lewison, highlighting her extensive background in studying vulnerable wildlife populations and her specialization in hippos, making her part of an elite group of experts on these animals.

Notable Quote:

"If you want to submit a question ahead of time before we record, you can become a [e-mail] ologies it costs about 25 cents an episode to join." — Allie Ward [00:27]

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Hippo Biology and Behavior

Dr. Lewison begins by breaking down the etymology of "hippopotamus," explaining that it translates to "river horse" from Latin, reflecting their semi-aquatic nature. She classifies hippos as artiodactyls, relating them to animals like deer and giraffes, and emphasizes that hippos are among the largest land mammals, surpassed only by elephants and rhinos.

Key Points:

• Anatomy: Hippos have a robust body with minimal neck structure, limiting their ability to lift their heads. This anatomical feature influences their grazing behavior, as they primarily consume short grass.
• Diet: As herbivores, hippos consume vast quantities of grass—estimated between 50 to 100 pounds daily—to sustain their massive size.
• Stomachs: Unlike ruminants, hippos possess a three-chambered stomach that allows them to extract maximum nutrients from their plant-based diet.

Notable Quote:

"Hippos are basically like lawnmowers. They eat a tremendous amount of grass, and it has to be pretty short grass." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [05:28]

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Studying Hippos: Challenges and Methods

Dr. Lewison shares her journey into hippo research, highlighting the difficulties in studying these elusive animals. Unlike more conspicuous species, hippos spend much of their time submerged in murky waters, making observation a formidable task. Traditional methods like night scopes and Land Rovers are employed, but there remain significant gaps in data.

Notable Quote:

"If you're doing a flyover, right, you take pictures. That's one of the ways that we. We count, you know, animals in remote areas." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [50:11]

Innovative Techniques:

• Drone Technology: Revolutionizing hippo research by providing unobtrusive ways to monitor populations and behaviors without disturbing their natural habitat.

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Conservation Status and Threats

The conversation shifts to the alarming decline in hippo populations, estimated at around 130,000 individuals across 38 African countries. Dr. Lewison highlights habitat loss as the primary threat, exacerbated by human encroachment and climate change. She also discusses the plight of pygmy hippos, a rarer species confined to West Africa, struggling with habitat fragmentation and low population densities.

Notable Quote:

"We think of hippos as like the size of a VW bus. And so they're using this three chambered stomach structure to extract all the nutrients and keep things in their stomach kind of a long time." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [13:35]

Case Study: Cocaine Hippos in Colombia

• Originating from Pablo Escobar's private collection, the hippo population in the Magdalena River has burgeoned to around 200 individuals. This invasive population poses ecological challenges and conflicts with local communities, leading to controversial management strategies like contraception and culling.

Notable Quote:

"If they find that are hiding, they have to stick with the bachelor herd." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [46:38]

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Human-Hippo Interactions: Myths vs. Reality

A prevalent myth is that hippos are among the deadliest animals in Africa, surpassing even sharks. Dr. Lewison debunks this misconception, clarifying that while hippos can be aggressive, especially when their territory or young are threatened, they do not kill more humans than other animals like mosquitoes or snakes.

Notable Quote:

"I don't think hippos are naturally aggressive to people. The biggest threat that they face is habitat loss." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [23:31]

Conflict Sources:

• Boat Accidents: Often involving fishermen or tourists inadvertently disturbing hippos.
• Crop Raiding: Hippos venturing onto agricultural lands in search of more nutritious food sources, leading to confrontations.

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Social Structure and Reproduction

Dr. Lewison elaborates on the social dynamics within hippo populations, describing them as polygynous with dominant males leading groups of females and their offspring. Unlike monogamous species, hippos do not form life-long pair bonds. Bachelor herds consist of non-dominant males who may challenge for leadership, leading to competitive displays.

Notable Quote:

"Hippos are something called polygynous, which means there's a single male, a dominant male, and lots of females that he probably mates with." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [35:18]

Communication:

• Limited understanding of hippo vocalizations and underwater communication, which remains a significant research gap.

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Interesting Hippo Facts and Misconceptions

Several intriguing aspects of hippo biology are explored, challenging common misconceptions and highlighting unique adaptations:

• Blood-Sweating Myth: Hippos do not sweat blood; instead, they secrete a reddish-orange pigment that acts as sunscreen and has antibiotic properties.

  Notable Quote:

  "They don't sweat blood, but it is sort of a reddish orange pigment. And that is something that people have isolated because they were able to get it off a captive hippo." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [56:46]

• Evolutionary Link to Whales: Contrary to popular belief, hippos are more closely related to whales than to other artiodactyls, a revelation confirmed through genetic studies.

  Notable Quote:

  "Common hippos, the big ones you're used to, they're most closely related to whales." — Allie Ward [17:20]

• Cultural Depictions: Misrepresentations in media, such as Disney's "Jungle Cruise," perpetuate inaccurate and sensationalized views of hippos as relentless predators.

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Listener Questions and Answers

The episode features a series of listener-submitted questions, addressed by Dr. Lewison with insightful and often humorous responses:

1. Dangerous Behavior During Bubble-Blowing:

   • Question: "Is it true that hippos are really only dangerous when they're blowing bubbles and wiggling their ears?"
   • Answer: Dr. Lewison emphasizes that aggression stems from protective instincts and territoriality, not merely bubble-blowing or ear movements.

2. Monogamy in Hippos:

   • Question: "If hippos are monogamous, do they mate for life?"
   • Answer: No, hippos are polygynous and do not form lifelong pair bonds.

3. Cocaine Hippos in Colombia:

   • Question: "Is there a plan for the cocaine hippos in Colombia?"
   • Answer: Dr. Lewison discusses the complexities of managing the invasive hippo population, balancing ecological concerns with human safety.

4. Consumption of Hippo Meat:

   • Question: "Do people eat hippos?"
   • Answer: Yes, in some regions, hippo meat is consumed, contributing to population declines alongside habitat loss.

5. Predators of Hippos:

   • Question: "Are there any other animals besides humans that prey on hippos?"
   • Answer: Generally, humans are the primary threat. Crocodiles rarely prey on adult hippos, and while lions may take down juveniles, predation is not widespread.

6. Social Relationships:

   • Question: "Do hippos have best friends?"
   • Answer: Dr. Lewison highlights mutualistic relationships, such as with oxpeckers, which clean hippos of parasites.

7. Hippo Waste and Ecosystem Impact:

   • Question: "Is Mudang ortner for a young pygmy hippo?"
   • Answer: Discusses the role of hippo waste in nutrient cycling within aquatic ecosystems, supporting other life forms like tilapia.

8. Climate Change Impact:

   • Question: "What might happen to hippo populations given climate change and upstream development?"
   • Answer: Climate change poses a significant threat by reducing water availability, exacerbating habitat loss and increasing human-hippo conflicts.

Notable Quote:

"If I am, it's because elephants just get so much attention. And I know they have incredible behaviors... but I think hippos have all of these things too." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [62:17]

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Conservation Efforts and Future Directions

Dr. Lewison underscores the urgent need for conservation initiatives tailored to hippos, emphasizing habitat protection and coexistence strategies with local communities. She advocates for increased research facilitated by technological advancements like drones and calls for more scientists to enter the field of hippopotomology.

Notable Quote:

"I care about elephants too. But I think hippos have all of these things too. It's just that we can't see it and we don't know it." — Dr. Rebecca Lewison [62:17]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with heartfelt reflections from both Dr. Lewison and the hosts, reiterating the importance of understanding and protecting hippos. Alie Ward shares personal anecdotes about managing stress, drawing a parallel to hippo behaviors, and encourages listeners to support conservation efforts through donations and spreading awareness.

Final Thoughts:

• Dr. Lewison: Advocates for a balanced approach to hippo conservation, focusing resources on African populations while acknowledging the ecological complexities of non-native populations like those in Colombia.
• Alie Ward: Emphasizes the toxic relationship humans have with hippos, urging listeners to become more mindful of their interactions and impact on these vital ecosystem engineers.

Notable Quote:

"This whole episode has convinced me that we're in a toxic relationship with hippos. We're the toxic partner because we fawn over them, we love bomb them, and then we take what they need most." — Allie Ward [65:28]

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Additional Resources

Listeners interested in further exploring hippo research and conservation can access links to Dr. Lewison’s work and supportive organizations like the Wei Chow Community Hippo Sanctuary through the show notes. The episode also promotes Smologies, a spin-off series offering kid-friendly, classroom-safe content inspired by Ologies classics.

Support the Show:

• Patreon: Become a patron at patreon.com/ologies to submit questions and support the podcast.
• Merchandise: Explore Ologies merchandise at ologiesmerch.com.

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Ologies with Alie Ward continues to illuminate the quirky and profound aspects of various scientific disciplines, blending humor with in-depth analysis to educate and entertain listeners. This episode on hippopotamology not only sheds light on the hidden lives of hippos but also calls for a reevaluation of human impact on these incredible animals.

Transcript

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[Allie Ward]

Oh, hey, it's the fish soup that you spilled all over the kitchen, which actually did happen to me. Hallie Ward. And this is Ologies. It's a podcast where we explore an ology a week. So you are tuning into a chat about hippos. It will leave you changed. It changed me. We got a true hippopotamologist, a professor of biology at San Diego State University, whose research at Vassar and UC Davis focused on vulnerable wildlife populations and conservation and of course, hippos. So they know way more about hippos than most people ever will on the planet. And they're in a very elite club of hippopotamologists. And I asked her all of my very not smart questions as well as yours. If you want to submit a question ahead of time before we record, you can become a [e-mail] ologies it costs about 25 cents an episode to join. It helps fund the show. You can also buy ologies [e-mail] or you can support for no dollars by leaving us a review, which helps convince me that I'm not broadcasting to an assort of dolls in a basement. And I read all your reviews, such as this one from Chris F. Who writes, even if I were a many legged insect, I still wouldn't have enough appendages to count all the times I've thrown a Did you know this bizarre and uniquely entertaining fact about X, Y or Z at an unsuspecting friend since I started listening to this podcast? Three cheers to you, weird podcast dad, Chris F. And all my stuffed animals listening out there. Thank you for letting me father you. Okay, hippos. Hippos, you might know. You probably know that. Hippopotamus. In Latin it means river horse. If you didn't know that, I'm gonna give you a second. It's. Hippo means horse. Potamus means of the river hippopotamus. River horse. These beasts, they are artedactyls, meaning that they have an even number of toes, like a bison or A deer and a giraffe. Those are all inartodactyls. And after elephants and rhinos, hippos are the largest land mammal. Even though the common hippo's scientific name is hippopotamus, amphibious terrestrial animal. We'll get into it. So point. Your weird little ears are a way to learn about knife teeth. Blood, sweat, swamp hippos, pet hippos subspecies, their daily diet, the current state of hippo conservation, the absolute chaotic affection we have for mudang. How many people hippos kill a year? For real? If you need to apologize to a hippo. Who are hippos best friends? Their role as ecosystem engineers. If you have ever been brainwashed about a hippo, what's up with their nostrils? How to keep a hippo in your pocket. And tips on flattering your friends into planning a group vacation with conservation biologist, professor and actual real life hippopotamologist, Dr. Rebecca Lewison.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I'm Rebecca Lewison. I'm she her.

[Co-host]

Thank you so much for doing this. As someone who studies hippos, this is a busy time of life for you and we will get to why. How long have hippos been part of your bread and butter?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I started studying hippos as a graduate student. I was at UC Davis doing my PhD in Ecology and I kind of stumbled into this project to work on hippos. My interest was to study behavioral ecology. At the time I just really loved it. Was fascinated by sort of the minutiae of animal behavior. And I thought, oh, this will be perfect, I'll study hippos, which anyone who actually studies behavior will be laughing when they hear this because you think like, no, no, no, no. You study behavior on small things like birds or squirrels. Not hippos, not her.

[Allie Ward]

She dedicated her research to a notoriously challenging terrestrial species. What the hell happened?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

But I had this opportunity because I had spent time in Kenya as an undergrad and so could speak some Swahili and had traveled around and just had a fair amount of field experience. And so I got this amazing opportunity and kind of just fell into it and didn't realize what I was getting into at the time and sort of entering this amazing world of this understudied animal.

[Co-host]

So it might be easier to see the behavior of like spiders if they're living in the lab and stuff.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Exactly. You can't study it in the lab. You can't manipulate it at all. They're actually really hard to study, period. Because they spend almost all their time in the water. Like you couldn't pick Something less studyable.

[Co-host]

If you tried, you know, pop. Culturally, there's no lack of hippos.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Who didn't play Hungry Hungry Hippo as a kid.

[Co-host]

It's Hungry Hungry Hippos.

[Advertiser]

Whoever gobbles up the most marbles wins.

[Co-host]

I played it all the time. They don't even eat marbles in real life, right?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

They definitely don't.

[Co-host]

What are they eating? Are they eating mostly plants?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

They are eating mostly plants. So they are herbivores. They eat grass. So we can be a little more specific than that. They're basically like lawnmowers. They eat a tremendous amount of grass, and it has to be pretty short grass.

[Co-host]

Why?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Well, because it's just. Wait till we unpack this. Like, hippos are amazing head to tail, but they don't really have a neck. They don't really have any structures in the back of that part of their spine. So they can't really lift their heads up. Like, when you think of, like, giraffes or elephants, they can't do that. So they're really limited by the grass height.

[Allie Ward]

No neck. Hippos are neckless.

[Co-host]

And so are they foraging the grasses on the banks of rivers or are they coming up on land?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yes, that's a great question. And it's a little bit of a. Yes, they do forage on the banks. But what you'll see if you're in a place where there are a lot of hippos is you really know a lot about where hippos are going because they have these trails, and you can look down on the trail and see, like, a hippo print, another hippo print. So they just follow these trails for a really long time. So they're really well established to what we call grazing lawns. So areas of short grass that are some distance away from usually the water where they're in.

[Allie Ward]

So they have stomped down a little highway that leads to a food court of short grass. It's like a free buffet, but it only serves short grass.

[Co-host]

If hippos are like the size of a car, a small car, and they're eating just a very particular kind of grass down a long trail, how are they getting enough calories to have so much cake to have such dump trucks?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, it's crazy. We think they eat somewhere between, like, maybe 50 to 100 pounds. We don't 100% know because it's hard to tell. And obviously in captivity, their diet is much better. They. You'll see them, like, eating watermelon or pumpkins. You know, if you've seen the videos. So they're not necessarily super particular on the species of grass, just the height of the grass. So I think these grazing lawns are there because of them and they continue to get mowed down by hippos and they're pretty long lived. So I'm sure they have a lot of information that they store. And if you want to study, like if you were a graduate student and you were captivated by foraging behavior, that's what you do. You'd follow the paths, you'd sit in a vehicle and you'd get some crude night scope and you'd watch them for hours and hours and hours. And that's basically what I did.

[Co-host]

Are they nocturnal?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yes. They only come out of the water at night. What? And we think that's because of thermoregulation. Right. They're adapted to be in the water. They don't do well if there isn't standing water and they'll die without that. So in the dry season, and so for most of the year, they are only coming out of the water, you know, when it's dusk and getting dark. So, yeah, what I would do is sit. I would drive my Land Rover to the place where that foraging lawn was and then I would sit on the roof with a pretty old school night scope and watch them forage. That's what I did for about a year.

[Co-host]

When would you sleep? Would you sleep during the day?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I have some crazy stories of falling asleep and like waking up to elephants at my eye level because I would fall asleep. Like you said, I wasn't getting enough sleep. But yes, I would sleep during the day and try to stay up and I would have to do it when there was some full moon because it was really crude. It was, you know, mid-90s, so we had night scopes, but nothing like we do now.

[Co-host]

What happens if you're asleep on top of a Land Rover watching hippos and an elephant wakes you up?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

That's a good question. The incredible thing is what I remember doing is picking my head up and I'm literally at eye level because I was on the top of this pickup truck and I literally just picked my head up. I saw an elephant and I was so tired I just put my head down and went back to sleep.

[Co-host]

No.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah.

[Co-host]

Did you think you were dreaming for one second?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I think I woke up in the morning and I definitely was like, what? What? But, you know, for people who work in the field and yeah, obviously I was careful and, you know, followed all the protocols I was supposed to follow. But Amazing things happen.

[Allie Ward]

Just a normal day on the job for a hippo ecologist.

[Co-host]

So you're absolutely in a safari park of life or you're surrounded by something that sounds like a fever dream. What are you doing when you're watching them at night? Are you taking notes like this one went and did a poop on this one, or this one seems to be crying.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I know it's. So I'm going to say it out loud and then people are going to think like, what scientists do. What? But I was actually counting the number of bites and steps. I know I say it out loud and I just think, what? And it does sound like minutiae to me too. But it's fascinating. Like we know what we do. What do hippos do? How far do they go? Can they just go anywhere? Like you were asking those questions initially. So I spent all this time trying to understand sort of their, their strategy. How do they make it work? How do they get enough? How do they decide where to go and how do you make choices about where to forage?

[Co-host]

And so when we see hippos in zoos, they are opening their gaping moths and a whole pumpkin goes in. But do they have that kind of experience ever in the wild?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

They don't. Hippos in captivity, you know, all the accredited places that hippos are living, takes amazing care of the animals. They give them lettuce and pumpkins and watermelon and amazing things and very, very well fed. But no, nothing like that happens to hippos in the wild.

[Co-host]

How long do they live? You said they live a long time.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, we think they live around 30 to 40 years in the wild and in captivity they can live quite a bit longer.

[Co-host]

And okay, they're horses of the river, right? Like water horses? Yes. How are they extracting calories from a bunch of grass? Do they have stomachs like hippos? I mean, stomachs like horses, hippos.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

You're never going to believe this. Hippos have stomachs like hippos. Okay? So remember I said they are incredible head to toe. So they have incredible, incredible stomachs. So anyone who's like fascinated by stomachs, there's not going to be a very large slice of listeners. But you out there, they have all this interesting stomach structures that actually is similar to what cows have. They are not ruminants, but they do have this like blind sac, they have like this three chambered stomach, but they do something similar to ruminants. So they don't have like cud, but they keep things in their stomach a really long time. And I think that gets to your question, like way more than elephants are like conveyor belts. It goes in and it goes out. And if you see an elephant poop, I don't know who has, but you'll notice like, oh, I know what that is. It looks just like what they just took in. But for hippos, not so. So it really breaks down a lot. So that this three chambered stomach has this ability to extract resources. So even though 50 to 100 pounds sounds a lot for wild hippos, like you said, they're size of a VW bus. And so they're using this three chambered stomach structure to extract all the nutrients and keep things in their stomach kind of a long time.

[Allie Ward]

So if you're a hippo doing your thing, it's say a Thursday and you're eating an average of 75 pounds of mowed grass, which is about two huge garbage bags full of lawn clippings per day. So much salad. Your favorite dressing, I guess is mud. There's no croutons. Maybe you got some accidental worms in there, but you're eating dirt grass. It's the breakfast of champions. It's the lunch of champions. It's the dinner of champions.

[Co-host]

How many pounds are we talking of? Hippo?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

So they're about like 2,500 to £3,000 in the wild.

[Co-host]

In the wild. And then pygmy hippos by contrast.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Pygmy hippos by contrast are about 400 to 450.

[Allie Ward]

So there are only two species of hippopotamuses or hippopotami. Either word is legit and fine. I thought there were maybe 10 species of hippopotamus, but there are two. The common big ass hippo that you're used to is a hippopotamus amphibious. And then there's the pygmy hippo, coeropsis liberiensis. You don't need to know those names. But there's just two species and pygmy hippos are one sixth the size of a regular hippo or a common hippo.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Really? Really. Quite a bit smaller. Yeah.

[Co-host]

That's kind of like a pig, right?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

A big pig. Absolutely.

[Co-host]

Wait, how come I didn't know about pygmy hippos until now?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

This is the reason most people don't. It's because pygmy hippos are only in West African countries. And even within West African countries they're only in four of them and they're very, very secretive.

[Allie Ward]

Whereas the big hippos that you're used to are just like, here, they're like, I'm in the river, what's up?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

So we think of common hippos right there, this iconic animal of the African savannah, right. You'll see a picture of like a big hippo gaping with the sunset behind it. Until 2006, we hadn't even ever had a picture of pygmy hippos in the wild.

[Co-host]

No.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

And it's because they're very rare, right? They're an endangered animal. And they've. There's used to be a very large forest complex in Sierra Leone and Liberia and guinea and Cote d'ivoire that kind of went over that entire region. It's largely been lost or there's been a lot of habitat loss of that forest. And that's what pygmy hippos rely on. They're also solitary, so they don't do this big group aggregation that we see with common hippos. So it's not surprising. They're secretive and solitary, cryptic forest animals. And there's very, very few of them.

[Allie Ward]

These little big babies, they live in Northwest Africa in forests. They keep to themselves. They come out at night like Mothman. And they're little, they're like farm hog size. As for how long humans have been, like, gazing at them from behind a fence. According to this 1972 paper, the care and breeding of the Pygmy Hippopotamus in captivity. The first time they were introduced into captivity was in 1873 in a Dublin zoo. Now, I was looking to try to find out more about that, but instead I stumbled upon an article about a Scottish zoo who just a few months ago welcomed the birth of a baby girl pygmy hippo. And then they made the decision to name her haggis. In all fairness, she does resemble kind of a gray lump made of skin. But they didn't. They didn't have to go there. But yeah, the people, they want the baby pygmy hippos.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

With little sign that Mudung fever is waning.

[Allie Ward]

It seems this bouncy pig is more than earning her keep. Forced out of their land and hunted to near extinction in the wild. But in captivity, absolute slay.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

San Diego Zoo, you know, fantastic zoo. When I used to go with my kids and we'd be standing at the pygmy hippo, people would say, oh, these are just baby hippos.

[Co-host]

Oh, that's gotta be infuriating for you. What did you say?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I corrected everybody thank you. Whether they wanted it or not. But they do look, honestly, to me, they look very different, but I can understand why people maybe think they're the same thing, only smaller. So for everyone listening, they're absolutely not. Pygmy hippos are a separate species and actually, evolutionarily, they split from common hippos, like, millions of years.

[Co-host]

Really?

[Allie Ward]

Yeah.

[Co-host]

So it's convergent evolution.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah. And a lot of the structures that they have are not that similar. But one of the things that I know people sometimes get fascinated about common hippos is that they are most closely related to whales and cetaceans.

[Co-host]

No, that's true.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

No, that is 100% true.

[Co-host]

No. What?

[Allie Ward]

That's right. Common hippos, the big ones you're used to, they're most closely related to whales. Whales, yes.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

And we know this from. From, like, all lines of evidence. Like, it used to just be morphology, morphological evidence, and they did, looking at fossils and different parts of the animals. But as science progressed and we started using genetic information, they've used all sorts of genetic tests to demonstrate that they are, in fact, sister taxa, cetaceans and hippos. So, no.

[Co-host]

So many questions. Mouths, mouths. I'm thinking of, like, baleen, Huge, insane mouths on whales and hippos. Why mouths so big?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Why are their mouths so big? That's a good question, actually. So, and then pygmy hippos don't have the gape like common hippos do. Right. Common Hippos have like, 180. They can actually open their jaws that much unhinged, you know, and it is a good question. Why? Because it's not like they're eating pumpkins and big things in the wild. I will say that male hippos, sometimes you'll see male hippos engaged in what looks like, we're going to say like this mortal combat. I don't think it usually results in mortality, but they do use their gape both, I think, against other hippos, you know, if they're having a territorial fight, and other animals, they're pretty badass.

[Co-host]

How big are their teeth?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Well, so they have different types of teeth. They have sort of molars and then they have canines which come up, which can be 9 or 10 inches, and then they also have incisors. The canines are actually most similar to elephant tusks.

[Co-host]

What are they used for?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Again, it's probably just some type of defense.

[Co-host]

That's so much tooth for someone that eats grass.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

So much tooth. And it's a Bummer for them, because those canine teeth actually do have ivory.

[Co-host]

Oh.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

So it's not as high quality as elephants, but it's one of the reasons that hippos have gotten wrapped up in the ivory trade, or legal ivory trade, is because they're canines. So those are the ones that are sort of the curved ones coming out of their bottom jaw. Have ivory or native ivory? Yeah.

[Allie Ward]

These tusks, these mouth harpoons, grow their entire lives. And the bottom incisors, they jut straight out for better stabbing. And though females do have smaller teeth than the males, male tusks can be over 20 inches long, or 60 centimeters. Why so big? Because they use them to gore the mouths of their rivals in this spitty, bloody jab battle. It looks like chewing on glass.

[Co-host]

Now that I know that they are sister taxa to whales.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah.

[Co-host]

Swimming. How are they swimming? They got no flippers. What's going on?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

All right, you ready? They aren't even swimming. No, they can't swim. They sort of glide, walk, run along the bottom.

[Co-host]

So they're never in deep water.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

They can be in deep water, they can be submerged, they can stay under for about five to six minutes, but they're not actually swimming. I guess if you think about. If you were doing aquarobics, I was.

[Co-host]

Just gonna say this is like going to the Y. What?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, don't try this with them. But it is just like that.

[Co-host]

And so how are they underwater for five or six minutes? And what occasion do they have to use that feature?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, that's a really good question. What are they doing under there? So one thing. Remember we talked about them being related to whales, they have nostrils on the top of their. So if you look at a hippo. Let's see, how do I describe this?

[Allie Ward]

So essentially, your nostrils face your feet, Right. Don't put your fingers in there, but, you know, they're facing your feet, they're pointing down. Hipponostrils are, like, on the top of their head and they're facing the sky like, you know, Shrek's ears. That's like their nostrils. But they also have ears that look like Shrek's ears. So they kind of have like a Shrek's ears for ears, and then a small Shrek's ears that are actually their nostrils. It's just unsettling. I like it.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

And they actually have muscular and anatomical features that are similar to blow holes. So the nostrils close when they go underwater. And when they come up, one of the ways you know that there's a hippo There is, because you hear the. Right when they blow out. And so that's similar to what we see with cetaceans. Right. When they come up and they're. They're blowholes. So there's actually some characteristics of. Of their nostrils that are similar to that. What do they do underwater? It's hard to know because we really. It's very hard to see. Jacques Cousteau famously, like, put this fake hippo, and people have tried this, like, deploy, like a autonomous vehicle in the water dressed up as a hippo.

[Allie Ward]

Bernard touches a fleeing hippo and then.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Cannot resist petting her baby.

[Allie Ward]

It was not a very good idea.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

It doesn't go very well for the autonomous vehicle.

[Allie Ward]

Right.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

The hippos are just like, no, get that thing out of here. So it's pretty hard to see what they're doing. And mostly they're in water that is not clear. You can't see anything.

[Co-host]

I was gonna say it's like a chocolate river.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

That's right.

[Co-host]

Hippos killing people. Let's talk about it. Because they cause more human fatalities than sharks, which, as if we don't have it coming, like, we have it coming so hard. But how are they lethal?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I do want to say, as I. Because I think I have to represent for the hippos on this one, that more hippos die as a result of hippo human conflict than humans, for sure. Which is not to underestimate the devastation that happens when there's a fatality. But I don't think hippos are naturally aggressive to people. The biggest threat that they face is habitat loss. They rely on freshwater. We rely on freshwater. We want to put a farm next to a river because that's where it's easy to grow crops. That's where they live. They're obligate, you know, in the water. They have to be there. So it's not like they can just pick up and move. There has been an increase. Increase in hippo human fatalities, and I think it's really just an indication of habitat loss.

[Allie Ward]

So what's the source of all this drama? Surprise, it's us.

[Co-host]

Do those happen with overturned boats or bites or how does it.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, it definitely happens with people fishing in boats. It happens with tourists in boats. It does sometimes happen on land because hippos are crop raiders. Turns out they love eating. You know, we just said they love pumpkins. If you plant some, they'll come eat them. It's not usually pumpkins, but, like, corn or beans. They do a lot of crop rating right to their defense, you make. You put the food right next to where they live.

[Co-host]

So, yeah, it's like donuts in the break room. What are they supposed to do?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, and much higher quality nutritionally than anything else that they're eating. So it makes sense to them. But it's a definite problem, and it's really tough to develop deterrence. You know, people talk about electric fences, but a lot of this is happening in places where there might not be electricity or a lot of infrastructure. And so it's a real challenge to figure out how to get hippos and humans to coexist.

[Co-host]

How are hippo numbers? We know that the pygmy hippo is not doing so great, but how are hippo numbers in general?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Common hippos are in 38 countries. And so it's a challenge to get all that information, but our best guess is probably something around 130,000, which is not a lot in the world. Yeah, I mean, well, recently we only count the ones in Africa.

[Allie Ward]

So aside from Zeus, are there hippos outside of Africa? Oh, we will discuss.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, in Africa. And that's about probably a third of the amount of elephants that we have. And so it's a real issue. And the problem is when I would tell people, oh, I study hippos, first of all, that's crazy. And we're concerned because their numbers are declining. If you're in a place where there are a lot of hippos, someone's going to turn around behind you and be like, excuse me, do you see that large group of like, 50 to 100 hippos? But they aggregate. And so it may seem like there's a lot of them, but there's been a tremendous amount of loss of habitat. And, you know, 130,000 is not very many.

[Co-host]

Yeah, I would have thought there were millions out there. And when it comes to distribution, 38 countries is so many countries. But if you had a map of the world, where do we think they are that they're not, and what would surprise us about where they are? Like, when it comes to their range, what do most people think versus what's the reality?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, I think most people know, like I said, sort of East African countries. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa. Botswana has a lot of hippos. The place that we know hippos are probably most vulnerable right now is West African countries because there's much more population growth, less habitat for hippos, a lot more pressure on freshwater resources. And so I think there's probably people in countries like Nigeria or Guinea or Guinea Bissau, that they may not even know that they have common hippos because they exist in such low densities.

[Allie Ward]

And Rebecca says that while there are only two species, there is debate about whether up to four subspecies exist, since west and East African hippos are so isolated from each other geographically.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

And there's some disagreement of whether there are or aren't subspecies, but there are as potentially as many for subspecies.

[Co-host]

When you say disagreement, what is that like in the hippo community? Are there conferences? Do people not speak to certain colleagues anymore? What are hippo people like?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

There aren't very many of us. And part of it is because hippos are really hard to study. They're these animals that are hiding in plain sight. They're in the water during the day. It's very difficult to tell them apart. Right. With elephants, we have big ears that you can identify individuals and you just can't. And they're just not on a lot of radars for conservation organizations, so they haven't gotten a lot of funding. The hippo community is thin on the ground.

[Co-host]

Oh, well, you mentioned big ears. Why do they have such shiny ears?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

That is a good question. We don't really know, but it could have to do with the fact that most animals that develop in the water, like sea lions, have pretty tiny ears. Right. And so I think we don't tend to see animals that have, you know, come up evolutionarily in the water with big ears.

[Co-host]

I guess there's a reason we don't go swimming in gowns.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Exactly.

[Co-host]

You don't want too much drag. You mentioned the nostrils being like blowholes. The Jungle Cruise at Disney. You've been on it.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I have been on it.

[Co-host]

You're not far from Anaheim. What I recall from that ride is that there's a lot of puns. I believe there's some racism in it, but also there's a depiction of hippos as, like, nature's ultimate predator. Do you recall anything about that?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I do. It looks like the hippos are gonna.

[Co-host]

Attack the boat, but I'm gonna scare.

[Allie Ward]

Them off like I did my last relationship.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I don't remember engaging too many people, but I certainly told my whole family and the people I was with. This is not accurate. There's a lot of that. The one thing people ask me when they find out that I work on hippos is kind of where we started. Do they really kill more people than any African animal? I don't know who started that, but it certainly wasn't me. And I don't think it's accurate. It is not fact based. I think snakes kill way more people than hippos. I think the reason it started sort of this urban legend is because it's surprising. It's surprising that for people to know how fast they move on land and the answer is faster than us, you know, maybe 19, 20 miles an hour they can run, they can move extremely fast in the water. And I think that there has been an increase in hippo human conflict and that takes people by surprise because they're not particularly aggressive. I think naturally, I think what we're really seeing is habitat loss. They're under tremendous pressure and so those that the number of attacks is on the rise. But I just want to tell people now I don't think hippos kill more people than any other African animal.

[Co-host]

I mean hello, mosquitoes.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yes, exactly. That's who started this whole story. It was the mosquito lobby trying to point the finger at hippos.

[Co-host]

It goes like we did a mosquito episode recently. It's like mosquitoes, other humans, snakes, like dogs with rabies, like whatever. Humans and mosquitoes are the ones you gotta watch out for.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Absolutely.

[Co-host]

Can I ask you patron questions?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah.

[Allie Ward]

Okay, your questions about hippos in a moment. But first we're gonna fling some cash at a worthy cause and this week it's going to Weichow Community Hippo Sanctuary which is a community led tourism attraction project. It's located at Weichao in the upper west region of Ghana. And they say that hippos help regulate both aquatic and terrestrial habitats and are great ecosystem engine. So it's a great cause. To find out more you can go to wilderinstitute.org the link is in the show notes. So thank you for the heads up on that Rebecca and thanks for the money sponsors 2025 already a doozy. Sometimes life brings you chaos that you didn't ask for. But sometimes there are things that you can control. With Shipstation you can count on your day to day remaining calm. If you're in charge of order fulfillment. For an E commerce business, that's a certain kind of chaos of its own. But with Shipstation Station you never need to upgrade. Shipstation grows with your business. No matter how big it gets, you can lead your business into the future. They have smart features and automations. They help boost the efficiency, they save you time which all of us need. It's the fastest, it's most affordable way to ship products to your customers with discounts of up to 88% off UPS DHL Express and USPS rates up to 90% off FedEx rates what you can seamlessly, seamlessly integrate with services and selling.

[Co-host]

Channels that you already use.

[Allie Ward]

The dashboard of Shipstation is bonkers in the best way. You can import your orders from all these different e commerce sites. You can add your shipping services from all the major shippers. You can compare rates shipping labels. Of course, as someone who absolutely dreaded shipping, having some control definitely is a little breath of fresh air. So calm the chaos of order fulfillment with the shipping software that delivers switch to ShipStation today. Go to shipstation.com and use code ologies to sign up for your free trial. So that's shipstation.com codeologies and now a.

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[Allie Ward]

Okay, your questions. You can submit yours via patreon.com ologies it costs one hot dollar a month, although the upper tiers let you leave us audio questions. So let's dig into the bag and let's get those answered and find out how to make hippos happier.

[Co-host]

Deborah Brunner said Sadly, everything I know.

[Allie Ward]

About hippos is from the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. So I was wondering, is it true that hippos are really only dangerous when they're blowing bubbles and wiggling their ears?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I don't think that's true, Deborah. Okay, I think bubbles and wiggling is not the thing you have to worry about. I think the real thing you have to worry about. People ask me like, what do I do to sort of like fend off an attack and you know the answer is like, wait, why are you in a place where hippos can attack you? The thing we need to do is avoid them and not be in those spaces. Now, if you're a commercial fisherman in an area that has hippos, you know, it's a different situation. But most of us aren't.

[Allie Ward]

So, yeah, here's an idea. You don't want to see the sharp end of a tusk. Stay out of the river. If a hippo picked a lock and arrived in the middle of the night in your living room dripping with river poo, would you not grab the baseball bat between your bed and the nightstand and ask it in no uncertain terms to scram? I know you would. Speaking of certainty, do hippos know when they've found the one?

[Co-host]

Steph Simmons, Ann Arbor, Michigan asks.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I'm wondering, if hippos are monogamous, do they mate for life? No, they are not monogamous. They don't mate for life. And in fact, they don't really form bonds like that. So hippos are something called polygynous, which means there's a single male, a dominant male, and lots of females that he probably mates with. Hello, ladies. And that herd is like that, sort of, with one male and lots of females, until another dominant male comes over and challenges that hippo for that territory. So when you see the National Geographic pictures of two hippos with big gapes sort of going at it with those big teeth, we were talking about, like, what those are for. Those are territory fights for control over one of those polygynous herds.

[Co-host]

Got it. They're kind of like in a bar fight a little bit. Yeah, they're showing off a little, too.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Exactly.

[Co-host]

Amanda and Eli loves vultures. Both want to know. Eli says, I love hearing scientists describe animal sounds. Wheezes and honks and croaks. Oh, my. What do we know about the sounds they make? And what don't we know?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

That is a great question. And the answer is we know almost nothing about hippo communication. Why not? They're communicating in the air like we are, but they're also communicating in the water. And we don't really understand how they're doing it. We can record them, and people have done that, and they describe sort of clicks and other types of noises underwater. And then the noises that they make above ground are often described, maybe this person who asked the question knows, as like, wheeze, honks, like that. Right. It's not a great one. I'm probably not going to call them in, but I think it's these crazy noises, and we really don't know anything about what it means, what they're saying, how they're even communicating in the water.

[Co-host]

I so appreciate that you're able to mimic them like that. Do people ever try to get them to come to them?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

No one that I know. I think it's interesting because, honestly, it just feels like one of the wonderful mysteries of hippos. But it's also one of the things that's kept them, I think, off the radar and kept them sort of in this area of we see you, but we don't know anything about you. It is just that they're so tough to study.

[Co-host]

We need more hippopotamologists.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

We absolutely do.

[Co-host]

Several listeners asked this question that was absolutely not on my radar whatsoever. Amanda Nugent asks, is there a plan for the cocaine hippos in Colombia? From Escobar's estate, Kayla White, all caps. All caps, no punctuation, said, please, please, please talk about Pablo Escobar's hippos, Please. It's my favorite story to tell new people.

[Allie Ward]

It will be your new favorite story, especially for inquiring patrons. Alan Gross, Stephen Lee, Theresa Gleason, Kristin Love, Matt Goff, Jen Squirrel Alvarez. A Softly Boiled Egg. Christina Hammerberg, Lucy Vin Seguani, Dana Gregorius of Tomsk, and Pavka, 34, who needed to hear about these cocaine hippos.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah, it's a really crazy, crazy thing. So if you're just new to this. Pablo Escobar, who is a very famous narco trafficker, had four hippos, three females and one male, on his ranch and compound. And upon his death in 1993, for some reason, they just left them. Okay, cut to this. Many years later, and now there's probably around 200 hippos roaming wild in this area of Columbia called the Magdalena River. Turns out it's a great place to be a hippo.

[Co-host]

Oh, no.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

So hippos do really well under good conditions. It's one of the reasons why hippos can start having babies, like four years earlier in captivity. It's because the conditions are so good. So that's what we think happened in Colombia. There's grass everywhere. It's never a dry season. They never lose water availability. There's unlimited food, unlimited resources, and that's why we've seen this population explode. So what do we do now that there are 200 and maybe more hippos in Colombia? It's a really tough problem. There have been some suggestions and solutions that they've tried, but all of them take a lot of money. They've tried darting some with contraception. They've tried castrating some of the males. They have actually culled one individual, so they shot him. And that may sound terrible to some people. And I'm obviously concerned about hippo welfare, but I'm also concerned about the welfare of Colombians who live there. And there's lots of rare and endangered species in Colombia. There's no easy solution here. From my perspective. My focus is on protecting hippos in Africa, and that's where we need to be focusing our resources. So the idea of people have talked about, like, trying to send them to captive facilities, but it doesn't feel like a great use of resources to me because that's not really where they're supposed to be at all. The only reason they're there is because someone had hippos as pets.

[Co-host]

I guess this sort of dovetails into the question of meat. Rebecca Morrison. T. Nas Michael Sherman. Daniel Schmaniel. Jess Sunter. Several people asked, do people eat hippos?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

They do, and I never have. I'm a vegetarian. But people do eat hippos. There are some groups of folks who have taboos in certain countries in certain areas against eating hippos. But in most of the places where I've been, people do eat them. They have very thick, fat layers and sort of like pigs. And I've heard that they are extremely yummy. And, you know, people eat a lot of the parts, and so that's a lot of meat for a lot of.

[Allie Ward]

People and a few listeners. Raining Emily and Andy Pepper hoped that I would bring up what patron Mackenzie King wrote instead of a question offered. This feels like a great place to drop the fun fact I have about hippos. MacKenzie writes. In 1910, Robert Broussard, a Louisiana senator, proposed that hippos be imported from Africa to Louisiana to be the new version of beef in America. This was due to corporate beef monopolies, beef shortages, and super high prices on beef nationwide. I was like, whoa. Reigning Emily, Andy Pepper, and Mackenzie. I didn't even know about this. So, yeah, the American hippo bill was introduced by Robert Broussard, or as fellow Louisianans called him in the early 1900s, cousin Bob. And though he had the blessing of Teddy Roosevelt, New York Times food writers who attested that hippo brisket was fatty and tasted like lake cow bacon. And Broussard even had the support of some ecologists looking to solve the invasive water hyacinth problem that was plaguing New Orleans. New Orleans, Alas as you know, no swamp hippos lurk in our dark American waters. Our sprawling bass pro shops don't sell hippo calling devices to locals. We don't get to see invasive hippos learning to use crosswalks or trying to mate with hot dog carts. But yeah, in other countries, if they got a hippo, they may eat a hippo.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

And one of the threats to hippos is unregulated hunting. And in large part it's because they just sit in the water. You can take them out with a muzzleloader, you know, an old gun. They're just sitting right there and then you have 2,000 pounds of meat. So in some places where there's been civil unrest or really hungry people, which makes a lot of sense, right? Hippo populations have declined dramatically because people have needed to eat them to survive.

[Co-host]

Allison Ludwig wanted to know, are there any other animals besides humans that prey on hippos, or do predators just know to steer clear?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

In general, I think the only predator they really are concerned about is people they're not worried about. Crocs, that's one. Crocodiles. That's the question that comes up. People ask, oh, you know, wouldn't crocodiles eat baby hippos? Crocodiles do not stand a chance in the water. Really, Mom. Hippos are extremely protective, as moms are. In lots of places that you don't, there's no chance that crocodile is going to get them. I have seen lions taking down like juvenile hippos, so I know that it happens, but I don't think it's particularly common.

[Allie Ward]

Crocodiles can't even get them. A crocodile will shred your ass up and down and drown you as casually as eating a Snickers. But they can't fight off a hippo. Who would dare? Not many creatures if they don't have.

[Co-host]

A ton of enemies. Do they have a lot of friends like Marissa K. First time question asker, longtime listener, very excited about hippos, would like to know a little bit more about their social structure. Risa Perenni wants to know if they.

[Allie Ward]

Ever cuddle, do they pair or live separately? And patrons. Mona Finlayson, Franny Kirit Singh, Storm Kitty Hammond, Colin Robotn, Oliver Callis also asked this and in Bronwyn Iverson's Hugo's words.

[Co-host]

Do they have best friends?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

The one best friend I can think think of is a really cool mutualistic relationships between hippos and oxpeckers. So if you see hippos that are out of the water or just partially submerged you'll often see a particular type of bird that sits on them. It's called an oxpecker, that actually eats like ticks and other insects. So the bird gets free lunch and the hippo gets cleaned. So that's definitely a friend. In terms of their social structure, I think they are really social animals. We don't understand, like who's related to who in those herds. Again, we can't barely tell them apart. And for most people, unless you spend a lot of time looking at hippos, you can't even tell males and females apart unless they open their mouths. Their canine teeth, for the males, are much thicker, their head structure is different, but, like, they're not sexually dimorphic. Right. Sometimes males and females are really different sizes or different colors. They're all gray, they're all fat, they're all really big. And you really can't tell males and females apart when they're mostly submerged. Sometimes you'll see creches, which is groups of females and lots of offspring, like lots of calves and they can play together in the water. But again, that's because there's these big groups where it's one dominant male and lots of females and their offspring.

[Co-host]

Speaking of males, people asked about Rob Lara, the Pooh helicopter. Why? Lena Carpenter wanted to know, how do hippos just poop in the water, like the water they're in and then proceed to swim in it, like, no big deal. Boy. Hippo poop spraying. Discuss. Do they have middens? Do they just go wherever? There must be so much of it.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

That is definitely true. There is so much of it. And we actually think that hippo poop, and not just the poop itself, but like all of the compounds like silica and silicon that's in there are really important nutrients for the water areas, the wetlands, the rivers, the lakes where they live. And there's some evidence that, like when hippo populations decline, like fish populations also decline.

[Allie Ward]

Thank you, patron and first time question asker Alison Ludwig, for asking, do tilapia really swim behind them and eat their pooh? Alison Ludwig, they do. So, yes. Emily G. Ashley Tween and Rowan Tree. There are symbiotic relationships aplenty in a hippo's life. And so to gits and shiggles and Emma Henson, who asked, I have to befriend one before I die. How do I go about this? The answer is to become a tilapia. You're never going to be bored, you're never going to be hungry. Every day is a feast.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

It Is true that hippos, when we ask, like, where does a hippo poop? The answer is anywhere it wants. Mostly it is in the water. But with males, we do see that marking behavior. Another crazy thing. Ready for this?

[Allie Ward]

Not really.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

So what males do is they come out of the water, they start peeing, and then they spray it backwards, and then with their tail, use that to, like, spread with the stream of the pee and the poop coming out. It's gross and yet extremely effective. And I think it's territory marking. Although we don't really know this because we really only see males do that. So we think they're marking their territory. You'll see it as they come out of the water. They kind of do this at a couple places. Sometimes they'll smush it against, like, a tree or, you know, a rock and I. And we think, again, we don't know this for sure, but we think it's dominant males marking their territory.

[Co-host]

Oh, my God.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yeah.

[Co-host]

Which I've seen it in people's, like, horrified zoo videos, but I hope that that's, like, a blessing.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

There's just spreading the love, right? They're spreading what they do best, and it is one of the things they do best. They're really important nutrient movers and ecosystem engineers in that way.

[Co-host]

Stacy Bendixon wants to know, do they sleep underwater?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

No. Mostly when they're sleeping, they're resting above the water. So I remember I was thinking, like, imagine there's sort of a log that's the hippo's head. And so mostly when you see them resting, it's. They're resting on the bottom. And that's one of the reasons why their nostrils are really at the end of the log. That's their head is so they can breathe that way. So they're only underwater, again, at like five to six minutes maybe max at a time. It could easily be less. They're not sleeping underwater.

[Co-host]

Okay. There's no way that they could, lung capacity wise. But in general, they're not like, snoozing in a pile on the banks, though.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

They look like logs, honestly, when you go to an area where there's a lot of hippos and so there's sort of this, like, small top of the log. That's the hippo that you can see. That's them just sort of. And actually, I should say, are they sleeping? I don't know. They're certainly resting. We don't 100% know what they're doing when they're in there. In large part because it's not safe for us to get in there and find out.

[Co-host]

Do you think that scientists are starting to rely more on, like, drone footage? Is that helpful in terms of getting kind of closer to them and getting, like, a better eye on them?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Absolutely. It's amazing technology that I think has changed a lot. One of the reasons that it's so hard to find out how many hippos we have, that seems like such a simple thing. Just go count them like elephants. The problem is when you go do a flyover, right, you take pictures. That's one of the ways that we. We count, you know, animals in remote areas. At any one time, there could be 30 to 40% of the populations that submerged, right? They heard a noise and they got scared. And so now they're under the water so you can't see them. And so drone technology has been amazing opportunity to be able to really count hippos and just get some basic questions, like, how many are there? Where are they? How are these numbers changing? And I know it sounds really basic, but for something that's the fifth largest land animal, we still don't have great data on that.

[Co-host]

In terms of the word the beach master. Are you. You're familiar with that term? Is it. There's a really long time ago, a documentary about hippos, and they talked about how there's a beach master of hippos.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Or the beach master, a spot in the deepest part of the river is worth fighting for.

[Co-host]

And I wasn't sure if this is, like, a very common term for hippos, and this is just a side note, but that term has stuck around me and my. My good girl friend groups for decades now. Where the beach master is the one in our friend group who now has to decide, like, where we're going to go to dinner or like, someone needs to beachmaster this, because I can't deal. But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure if beach master's like, no, that's what we call the dominant male. But no, beachmaster is not a familiar term.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

It is not a familiar term with me, but it does kind of make sense. There is certainly a dominant male. And again, people always say, like, well, where are the rest of the guys? Yeah, the rest of the guys live in a bachelor herd, you know, at some distance away from the rest of the herd. So it's literally all the other males. So at some point, juveniles get kicked out of the main pod and they have to go with the bachelors. And that's where all the other Adult males go that aren't the dominant male. So you can find a bachelor herd that's associated with a large polygynous herd.

[Co-host]

It reminds me of like on the bachelorette when one gets a one on one date and the rest have to hang out at the mansion.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

That's exactly it. That they're waiting for their roses, they're waiting for their turn at bat and they might challenge that male, right? And that's when you'll see those cool sort of like big gaping fights where they stand off and you know, fight on the beach. So maybe that's the beach master.

[Co-host]

Do a lot of hippo males divergence?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Excellent question. It's very challenging to know how much sneaking there is, right? And for a lot of species where there's like a dominant male or even monogamous couples, there's still extra pair copulations we call it. And I don't know how much sneaking there is. So it's possible that those bachelor males sneak and get access to the females. What we don't know. And that's something that if we could get like tissue samples or you know, be able to do genetic testing to be able to kind of figure out lineages or which calves are related to which parents. It's so hard to get to them and it's almost impossible to tell them apart. Hippos just don't have any structures. It's rude probably to say they all look alike, but to our eye they really do.

[Co-host]

When it comes to trying to get DNA samples, their skin seems so thick. You can't just like run a Q tip over their skin and get samples, right? Like, what is it you've touched? Hippos?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I have touched hippos in captivity. I have touched dead hippos. I have not touched a live hippo in the wild. I've never been that close or in, you know, I wouldn't do that. But it's a great question like how do we get samples? Another question is like, why don't you just put a collar on them? What's the big deal? Go figure out where they go on the collar front. Turns out hippos don't have a neck. Most of the collars go around the neck. They don't have a neck. What they have is a head that's attached to like the rest of their barrel shaped body. You can't put a collar on them. So most of the technology that we have for tracking rhinos or tracking elephants won't work on a hippos. In fact, a colleague of mine the first tag that we took, and it wasn't a collar tag, it was like a tag that they attached just on the skin. Was. Wasn't until 2013, and it stayed on for like a kilometer. Amazing, amazing feet. But really, really hard. So hard to figure out where they're going and to get samples from them. The other thing about hippos, remember we talked about, they're amazing from head to tail. They have one of the thickest hides or skins of any animal, hands down. In fact, people used to use hippo skin to make whips because they are the most durable and hardest. So actually, even getting a dart or something like that into a hippo, very, very hard.

[Co-host]

But they're not a pachyderm.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

They are not.

[Advertiser]

Nope.

[Allie Ward]

Apparently a hippo hide can be 2 1/2 inches thick or 6 centimeters, which is comparable to a very robust slab of kitchen countertop or a butcher block made out of wet leather. And speaking of leather, yes, you could buy, say, a wallet made from hipposkin, and it looks kind of like thick, crackly suede. You could buy it, that is, if you had $99 plus tax and shipping, and you wanted it. Now, they are. I found some. They're handmade in Indiana by Amish craftsmen. And their website has images demonstrating, like, it's bill fold and slots for up to eight credit cards. And I was scrolling to the bottom of the description, and I spotted this small disclaimer that said, money and cards are not included. And I'm like, that there must they. They must have gotten one email from a customer who was just enraged that theirs arrived empty. But from seeing red to being tickled pink. What a segue. Let's discuss a question from Mirin Caradato, Ingrid Felzel, Disha Tatani, Scott Sheldon, Nikki G, Sarah Filo, Curtis Takahashi, Edward McGregor, Anthony Richards, Katie King, Ashley Mars and Sarah Manns, who asked, I beg your finest pardon, Sweating blood.

[Co-host]

So speaking of their skin, though, sweating blood, what's the deal? Do they sweat red? Is it sunscreen? What's going on?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

They don't sweat blood, but it is sort of a reddish orange pigment. And that is something that people have isolated because they were able to get it off a captive hippo. And a fantastic group of scientists From Japan in 2004, Core was able to extract some and figure out, like, molecularly, chemically, what's going on here. And it's just, as you said, it's not blood. It is a secretion, but it is a sunscreen and probably an antibiotic. Oh, and we think that that secretion both protects them from the sun, which we know is very important. We talked about hippos, the need for water and important for their thermoregulation. But also that secretion seems to be an important antibiotic.

[Co-host]

Ooh, I want that a little bit.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I wish I had it right. I could really use that sunscreen, right?

[Co-host]

A few Mudang questions because of course she's the cutest.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Cutest.

[Allie Ward]

Who could resist this face? Certainly not these huge crowds lining up at a zoo in Thailand to catch a glimpse of two month old Mu Dang. That's ty for bouncing pig Belle.

[Co-host]

Aspiring garbage archaeologist, asked, is it common or somewhat out of the ordinary for a baby hippo to be as ornery as Mudang? No shade. I wish I could be as ornery as Mudang. In public. They ask, is Mudang ornery for a young pygmy hippo?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

You know, I've asked for a couple other places. Like, she does seem to have a very lively personality. Nothing that she's done that I've seen. It seems like out of the ordinary. Anybody who's taking care of kids, like, they open their mouth all the time, they're pretty demanding and they want attention and she seems to be extremely healthy and just, you know, a lively pygmy hippo.

[Co-host]

What about some controversy regarding mudang? Jennifer Gorgon said, I heard there was some controversy about the treatment of mudang. Do you have an opinion on the issue? Anna Vilnire wanted to know. Would love some professional information. Are caretakers riling up some captive animals for the reactions that visitors want to see? They asked. And whether online content being the goal is harming the creatures that we seem to love so much. And Natalie Jones asked, is Mudang doing okay? It seems like having thousands of humans yelling and looking at you a day would mess up a baby's development. Is this a stage mother type of situation that needs intervention?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

One thing that's been wonderful about having Mudang on the scene is that people know about pygmy hippos and a lot of people maybe didn't even know they existed. They're not just smaller common hippos. This is a separate species, it's endangered. And, you know, I think this will be the only opportunity for most people to ever see a pygmy hippo. In fact, even people who study pygmy hippos, again, we, we only got pictures of them in the wild in 2006 from remote cameras. Not a person with a camera. A camera out there. By itself. So there's so much we don't know. And I think that having more people aware of pygmy hippos is great. The thing that really upset me about the story is knowing that people threw things in the enclosure. You know, there were people throwing shrimp or other types of food. And hopefully everybody who heard that story realized that's the thing that's a danger. Like you can never throw anything into an enclosure that has a wild animal. You may think you're doing, you know, something good, but they have a very strict diet. And I think having folks being respectful, you know, being quiet is a great thing when you go see animals in captivity because it is stressful and it is important that we're mindful of what their experience is like. So I appreciate those concerns.

[Co-host]

Okay, last question from listeners. Kate Cavanaugh said.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Hi, Allie, this is Kate in Wake Forest, North Carolina. I served in the Peace Corps in Botswana where I was lucky enough to see hippos in the Okabanga Delta. I'm wondering what your ologist thinks might happen to these specific populations given climate change and upstream development in this region.

[Allie Ward]

Thanks.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

This is a really important point to talk about, which is we talked about hippos being threatened from habitat loss, which is just us, you know, encroaching developing areas around freshwater. But climate change is another real serious threat, particularly for common hippos, but probably pygmies as well. But they rely on water resources in a lot of the places, a lot of the projections of where we think, you know, what's going to happen, it means less rainfall, less standing water. I think it's a real threat. It's getting closer. As we think about like ensuring coexistence of people and hippos into the future is the fact that the climate is changing and they are so sensitive to these climatic shifts. So I would say when we think about like winners and losers of climate change, I would put hippos in the loser category, you know, and something that we absolutely, it has to be on our radar because these are the resources that they need.

[Co-host]

Is there any flim flam that you just have to bust that you're like, this is not how it is. Other than painting them as absolutely cold blooded killers who want nothing more than humans demise?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

Yes. The whole they kill more than anyone else. Like if I can do one thing in my lifetime, I feel like it's dispelled that why no, it's not right. It's not accurate. Stop saying it. The other flim flam, I guess it's really just this idea of like, oh, well, there's so many of them. It's not true. Like, I know that they are abundant and they, they come in these big groups, but they're really declining in a lot of places. And even in areas where their populations may be stable, they're losing habitat either directly from human development or because of climate change on slightly longer scales. But I think that's a really important one. And I care about elephants too. Like, I sometimes come across as, like, grumpy about elephants, but if I am, it's because elephants just get so much attention. And I know they have incredible behaviors and they, you know, mourn, they're dead and they communicate where we can't hear them and amazing things. But I think hippos have all of these things too. It's just that we can't see it and we don't know it. But they're these incredible animals, certainly worthy of a future.

[Co-host]

What's the worst thing about being a hippopotamologist?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I think the worst thing is just that expectation of, oh, well, we know everything, but we don't even know how many there are, like basic, basic things. And that's sometimes frustrating because, you know, you kind of have to start the conversation from the scratch. And so studying hippos is about studying human coexistence with them. And I'm really hoping that sort of the next generation of scientists can use that technology to really think about innovative ways to protect people and protect hippos in their habitat.

[Co-host]

What's your favorite thing about hippos?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I honestly am captivated by them sort of as these, like, organisms. Like I said, I am fascinated by all those adaptations, all these things about their body, whether it's their teeth or their stomach or their skin. It's amazing. And it feels like every time we sort of look under another part of the hippo hood, they have another incredible adaptation to being these semi aquatic, sort of like half whale, half antelope, you know, and that's incredible to me. And I still find myself captivated, I mean, even though I've been studying this for a long time, by those adaptations, by all of the things that their bodies are able to do and navigate.

[Co-host]

If there were ever one sleeping next to you, would you want to give it a gentle kiss on the nosy?

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

I would. I know, I know better. We don't touch wild animals in the wild, but they're incredible. So, yes, I can safely say that if I happen to find one next to me that just wandered up And I could touch it safely. I absolutely would.

[Co-host]

I wonder if they know how much we love them.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

That is a good question. They probably don't give a hoot about any of that. But I would love that if that could really translate to people's passion of saying, I want to live in a world that has hippos, that has pygmy hippos, common hippos, and I want to know that they're going to be here for a really, really long time.

[Co-host]

Yeah. This whole episode has convinced me that we're in a toxic relationship with hippos. We're the toxic partner because we fawn over them, we love bomb them, and then we take what they need most. We take their habitat and we spread lies about them and then we slander them. So if anything, if you love hippos, just know you're the toxic one in the relationship. Clean up your act a little bit.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

It's you, it's not them. Yeah, absolutely.

[Allie Ward]

So hippo people happy to answer questions and we're so very lucky that Dr. Lewison was amenable to answering ours. Thank you again, Rebecca. And you can find links to her research and lab as well as to the Wei Chow Community Hippo Sanctuary at the link in the show notes. And we also have a link to our new show Smologies, which are shorter, kid friendly, classroom safe versions of Ologies Classics. They used to be in this feed but I bounced them to their own feed. So you can look for that show wherever you get podcasts. It's got new green artwork. We are at Ologies on Blue sky and Instagram. I'm on there as well as alieward with just one L and Ally. Thank you to [e-mail] Ologies for making the show possible. Ologies Merch is available at the link in the show notes. Thank you to Aaron Talbert for admin in the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Love to Mama Cath Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly A.R. dwyer does the website. Noel Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is the beach master of a managing director. Jake Chaffee edits Like a Hip Pro and the mighty Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Lead edits these into submission every week. Nick Thorburn moaned and honked out the theme music. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret about my life if you want it. And okay, so this week it's that I wear one of those rings, an aura ring which I've used for years. But an aura ring helps track sleep and your steps and stress. And no big shocker, I've started meditating again, literally just in the last week. My soul feels like a hairball in a drain over current events. And I can tell on my aura ring that when I do meditate, my heart rate and stress levels go way down. So that is great incentive to, like, keep at it. And I was gonna tell you guys that is a secret. And I looked at my app today to see, like, yeah, it did go down this morning when I meditated. But I also saw this really sharp spike in anxiety today. And I looked, and it was, like, two hours ago. And I realized it was precisely the time when I spilled a quart of fish soup on my pants and the kitchen floor and inside the fridge. It was, like, everywhere in fish soup. Of all the things. Iced tea, whatever. Fine fish soup. Like, honestly. Anyway, anxiety spike. Deep breaths. We're doing our best. We're all doing our best. I hope you enjoy a nice bath today, like a hippo would. Or you could treat yourself to a big mud salad. Whatever keeps your skin thick and your spirits buoyant. Go do it. Okay. Bye. Bye.

[Co-host]

Pachydermatology, Homeology.

[Allie Ward]

Cryptozoology.

[Co-host]

Litology.

[Allie Ward]

Nanotechnology.

[Co-host]

Meteorology. Old effect technology.

[Allie Ward]

Nephology, Serology.

[Dr. Rebecca Lewison]

The beach master retains his deep water kingdom for now.