49 Fun Facts About Hippo

The word 'hippopotamus' comes from Ancient Greek words meaning what?

River horse, from hippos (horse) and potamos (river): the Greeks' name stuck, even though the animal is not related to horses at all.

Which group of animals are the closest living relatives of hippos?

Whales and dolphins: scientists long grouped hippos with pigs because of the ridges on their molars, but blood proteins, DNA and fossils all point to whales instead.

What does a bull hippo spray in a wide arc by wagging its tail?

Its dung: neighbouring bulls turn their rear ends and shower droppings and urine about, a habit usually read as a sign that the patch is already taken.

The hippo is similar in size and weight to which other African heavyweight?

White rhinoceros: the two are so evenly matched that reference books disagree over which of them is the second-largest land animal alive.

Which of George Washington's belongings, wrongly remembered as wooden, was actually carved from hippo tusk?

His dentures: dentist John Greenwood carved the base from hippo tusk, added gold springs and left a hole for Washington's one remaining tooth; no wood was ever used.

Despite living in water, how do hippos actually get around underwater?

They sink and walk along the bottom because their bodies are too dense to float; despite a life spent in rivers, it is doubtful that a hippo can truly swim at all.

What can a hippo do while asleep underwater, seemingly without waking?

Surface to breathe: a hippo can hold its breath for only a few minutes, so a reflex lifts the sleeper up for air and lets it settle again.

The red 'blood sweat' that oozes from hippo skin works as what?

Sunscreen and antibiotic in one: the fluid is neither blood nor sweat, and its red and orange pigments absorb ultraviolet light while slowing the growth of bacteria.

What do hippos mainly use their long, sharp tusks for?

Fighting rivals: the tusks play no part in feeding and serve strictly as weapons, and the slashing wounds that bulls give each other can be fatal.

What makes up almost all of a wild hippo's diet?

Grass makes up nearly all of it: a hippo grips each mouthful with its tough, wide lips and tears it free with a jerk of the head.

When do hippos usually come ashore to feed?

After dark: hippos feed for hours yet eat little for their size, because a day spent resting in the water burns little energy.

Hippos trotting at top speed briefly do what?

Leave the ground: a 2024 study of 169 strides from 32 hippos found the animals only ever trot, yet at full tilt all four feet are briefly in the air at once.

A hippo's wide-open 'yawn' is really what?

A threat display: far from sleepy, a gaping hippo is warning an intruder off, and most disputes end there, with the smaller animal backing down.

Where do male hippos hold territories?

In the water only: a bull guards his stretch of river or lake for years, yet he lets other males stay so long as they defer to him and leave the breeding alone.

A hippo calf folds its ears shut to do what underwater?

Suckle: its ears fold and its nostrils seal to keep the water out, so the calf can nurse while fully submerged as well as on land.

Where does a hippo calf often rest in deep water?

Mother's back: a small calf climbs aboard to rest clear of the water, and its mother is fiercely protective, letting nothing else get too close.

Florida's governor declared Lu the hippo what so he could stay in a park for native wildlife?

Honorary citizen: residents rallied to keep the former film and TV animal actor when the state took over Homosassa Springs, and Lu lived on there until his death at 65 in 2025.

How does the IUCN Red List classify the common hippo?

Vulnerable: hippos are losing river and wetland habitat to farming and are hunted for their meat and teeth.

Which of these is a traditional name for a group of hippos?

A bloat: a fitting name for the tight-packed crowd, yet the adults lying side by side form almost no lasting bonds with one another.

The pygmy hippo, the only other living hippo species, survives in the wild mainly in which country?

Liberia holds most of them, with a few across its borders; the animal is so shy and forest-bound that outsiders did not learn of it until the 1800s.

Which US president was given Billy, a pygmy hippo, by tire magnate Harvey Firestone in 1927?

Calvin Coolidge's Billy went on to breed so successfully that almost every pygmy hippo living in an American zoo today is his descendant.

Moo Deng, the pygmy hippo who went viral in September 2024, was born at a zoo in which country?

Thailand's Khao Kheow Open Zoo let the public choose her name, and more than 20,000 people voted for Moo Deng, which translates as 'bouncy pig'.

Fiona, the premature hippo calf born in January 2017, became the star of which US zoo?

Cincinnati Zoo staff nursed her round the clock after she arrived six weeks early at just 29 pounds, and a children's hospital team came in to fit her drip when she grew dehydrated.

A wild hippo population in Colombia descends from animals kept by which man?

Pablo Escobar smuggled hippos in for his private zoo; after police shot him dead in 1993 the animals were left to roam, and their descendants have spread along the Magdalena River.

In 2022 Colombia officially declared its wild hippos what?

An invasive species: the herd, thought to be the biggest outside Africa, had kept growing, and the ruling led to plans to sterilise, relocate or cull the animals.

Which Egyptian goddess of childbirth was depicted as an upright female hippopotamus?

Taweret guarded mothers and babies: Egyptians wore her image on amulets and kept it in household shrines to watch over births and newborns.

In Egyptian myth, which god takes the form of a hippopotamus to fight Horus?

Set loses: in the tale of their long feud Horus wins contest after contest, and the gods finally award him the throne of Egypt.

Which beast from the Book of Job is widely thought to be based on the hippopotamus?

Behemoth appears in a Jewish legend in which it battles Leviathan at the end of days, and the righteous then feast on the flesh of both monsters.

Obaysch, a hippo sent from Egypt in 1850 who inspired the 'Hippopotamus Polka', drew huge crowds to which zoo?

London Zoo drew up to 10,000 people a day to see the first hippo in Europe since Roman times, an animal that Egypt's ruler had traded for several teams of greyhounds.

Huberta the hippo became a Depression-era celebrity by trekking a great distance across which country?

South Africa followed her 1,600 km wander in the newspapers for more than two years; when farmers shot her in 1931 there was a public outcry, and her mounted body went on show in a museum.

Owen, a hippo orphaned by the 2004 tsunami, bonded with what animal at Kenya's Haller Park?

A giant tortoise named Mzee, close to a hippo in colour: the frightened orphan ran to him on arrival, then trailed him everywhere, and the two ate and slept side by side.

Which ancient Greek historian wrote that the hippo had a mane and cloven hooves like cattle?

Herodotus added that its hide was so thick that, once dried, it was made into spear shafts, and that just one district of Egypt held the animal sacred.

Dwarf hippos survived on which island until within the last thousand years?

Madagascar's hippos may even have lingered into living memory: villagers interviewed in 1995 described a hippo-like beast, the kilopilopitsofy, that they said was last seen in 1976.

Which Congolese national park saw its hippos crash from nearly 30,000 in the 1970s to under 1,000 by 2005?

Virunga lost them to poachers selling meat during years of war; a 2016 survey found numbers climbing again as rangers and local fishermen worked together to protect them.

In the tabletop game Hungry Hungry Hippos, what are the plastic hippos racing to gobble up?

Marbles: players hammer a lever to make their hippo's neck shoot out and gobble them, and whoever has swallowed the most when the board is clear wins.

Who paid for the real hippo given to the 'I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas' singer?

Schoolchildren: her home-town paper and zoo ran a fund drive, youngsters across Oklahoma mailed in dimes, and Gayla Peevey handed the baby hippo to Oklahoma City Zoo.

In which Disney film does Hyacinth Hippo dance ballet to Ponchielli's 'Dance of the Hours'?

Fantasia turns the piece into a comic ballet of ostriches, hippos and alligators; to animate Hyacinth, the artists filmed and studied real dancers.

Which hippo, voiced by Jada Pinkett Smith, escapes Central Park Zoo with Alex, Marty and Melman?

Gloria gets a romance of her own in the sequel, where the smooth-talking hippo Moto Moto courts her before she falls for her old friend Melman the giraffe.

Peter Potamus, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon hippo of 1964, travels the world in what?

A hot-air balloon that also travels through time: Peter tours past eras with his monkey sidekick So-So and lets fly a hurricane-force holler when trouble looms.

Which play inspired hippos George and Martha's names?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf gave author James Marshall the names of its warring husband and wife; his hippos fall out too, but unlike Edward Albee's couple they always make up.

Saint Augustine was bishop of Hippo, an ancient city that lies in which modern country?

Algeria: Hippo is now the port of Annaba, and Augustine died there in 430 while a Vandal army was besieging the walls.

How do pygmy hippos mostly live in the wild?

Alone or in pairs, usually a mated couple or a mother and calf; they keep so well hidden in swamp forest that little is known about their lives in the wild.

According to the historian Manetho, which pharaoh from the dawn of Egyptian history was carried off by a hippopotamus?

Menes ruled for decades before the hippo seized him, by Manetho's account, which was written nearly three thousand years after the king is supposed to have lived.

Which Baroque painter's 1615-16 work The Hippopotamus and Crocodile Hunt is a rare depiction of the animal?

Peter Paul Rubens painted the hunt at a time when few European artists had ever seen a hippo, which is why the animal so rarely appears in art of the period.

A 2022 study found that hippos can tell neighbours from strangers by what?

Their calls: the 'wheeze honk' carries a long way, and when researchers played recordings, hippos reacted far more strongly to a stranger's voice than to a neighbour's.

Why do hippos spend most of the day wallowing in water or mud?

To keep cool: hippos cannot sweat and lose water quickly through their skin, so a day in the sun without regular dips would leave them dangerously dried out.

The Tassili n'Ajjer plateau, where ancient rock art shows hippos being hunted, lies in which desert?

The Sahara was not always desert: its earliest rock art records a fertile savanna teeming with hippos, fish and giraffes.

The 1910 'American Hippo bill' proposed importing hippos to be ranched for meat in which US state?

Louisiana congressman Robert Broussard hoped the animals would eat the water hyacinth choking his state's waterways while easing a national meat shortage; Congress never passed the bill.

Demand for hippo teeth rose sharply after a 1989 international ban on trade in what?

Elephant ivory: hippo tusks are made of the same material and are easy to carve, so when the ban came in, hunters turned to hippos and their numbers fell.