Read Online Red Nile: The Biography of the World’s Greatest River by Robert Twigger - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robert Twigger
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though the last hippo in Cairo probably died in the very early nineteenth century.
The hippo, or Hippopotamus amphibius , still lives on in the upper regions of both the Blue and the White Nile. It may not be as endangered as we think. The drug lord Pablo Escobar bought four Nile hippos in New Orleans and kept them at his Hacienda Nápoles estate about sixty miles from Medellín in Colombia. When he was captured in 1987 the hippos were left to run wild over the estate. By 2007 there were sixteen inhabiting the Magdalena river and causing trouble to both humans and cattle – attacking both and inflicting deep wounds with their two-foot-long tusks. Though hippos are vegetarian, mainly eating bankside grass, under stress they can become carnivorous despite being incapable of digesting meat properly. By 2009 the hunt was on for the leader of this renegade group of hippos, a highly aggressive male called Pepe by local law-enforcement agents. It was almost as if Escobar’s life was being replicated by his outsize pets. Finally Pepe was cornered and shot by police authorised by the local government.
That hippos are dangerous is attested to by every raft guide you’ll find on African rivers. A cursory check of YouTube reveals startling footage of a hippo taking on and beating a large Nile crocodile. A croc would only try and eat a dead hippo; a live one would be too dangerous. In general hippos are feared more than crocodiles by man because of their greater aggression, a product of extreme territoriality. A bull hippo requires about 250 yards of bank, which he will defend to the last. Large flattened runs through the undergrowth at the river’s edge are the places not to stop for a picnic – you may meet a hippo in a headlong rush aiming for the water he must defend. Females can also be aggressive, but less so, though it is hard to tell the sexes apart as they are of similar size.
When a hippo turns red you really need to take care.
That the ancient Egyptians depicted Set, the god of storms, the desert and chaos, as a red hippo suggests they knew about the so called ‘red sweat’ of the hippopotamus. As humans do, the hippo sweats during the heat of the day, but, unlike us, also when he – or she – is angry. And unlike any other animal studied the hippo even sweats under water. The red sweat has been shown to be both antimicrobial and UV protecting – a combination suncream and antiseptic, Savlon meets Soltan – and it is effective. Hippos do not have the scales of many water dwellers (in fact they share a common ancestor with whales and porpoises), and the many cuts and abrasions they endure heal remarkably quickly despite constant immersion in mud and water. According to Kimiko Hashimoto and Yoko Saikawa, who devoted an admirable seven years to studying the red sweat of the hippopotamus, the active ingredients in the sweat have been named as a combination of hipposudoric and norhipposudoric acids. These acids suffuse the red secretion which turns brown as it gradually dries.
The other ancient Egyptian god represented by the hippo is Taweret, ‘the great goddess’, who appears as a pregnant female – often, interestingly, with a crocodile on her back.
It is easy to mistake a pod of hippos for something else. I once saw what I was sure was a grey rock. In fact it was a pod of hippos in a circle with their heads on the inside of the wheel. Even at a hundred yards their line of backsides looked just like the rounded limestone boulders of the upper Nile – until they heard the splashing of our oars and came swimming over to investigate. Hippos swim at 5mph so a kayaker can outpace them, but it’ll be a close-run thing. If you are ina raft it is best to travel close to the bank even though that could be seen as an incursion into a bull’s territory. The reasoning is that even if the boat is battered on the river side you can jump off on to the land and beat a hasty retreat while the hippo eats your rubber raft. But
The hippo, or Hippopotamus amphibius , still lives on in the upper regions of both the Blue and the White Nile. It may not be as endangered as we think. The drug lord Pablo Escobar bought four Nile hippos in New Orleans and kept them at his Hacienda Nápoles estate about sixty miles from Medellín in Colombia. When he was captured in 1987 the hippos were left to run wild over the estate. By 2007 there were sixteen inhabiting the Magdalena river and causing trouble to both humans and cattle – attacking both and inflicting deep wounds with their two-foot-long tusks. Though hippos are vegetarian, mainly eating bankside grass, under stress they can become carnivorous despite being incapable of digesting meat properly. By 2009 the hunt was on for the leader of this renegade group of hippos, a highly aggressive male called Pepe by local law-enforcement agents. It was almost as if Escobar’s life was being replicated by his outsize pets. Finally Pepe was cornered and shot by police authorised by the local government.
That hippos are dangerous is attested to by every raft guide you’ll find on African rivers. A cursory check of YouTube reveals startling footage of a hippo taking on and beating a large Nile crocodile. A croc would only try and eat a dead hippo; a live one would be too dangerous. In general hippos are feared more than crocodiles by man because of their greater aggression, a product of extreme territoriality. A bull hippo requires about 250 yards of bank, which he will defend to the last. Large flattened runs through the undergrowth at the river’s edge are the places not to stop for a picnic – you may meet a hippo in a headlong rush aiming for the water he must defend. Females can also be aggressive, but less so, though it is hard to tell the sexes apart as they are of similar size.
When a hippo turns red you really need to take care.
That the ancient Egyptians depicted Set, the god of storms, the desert and chaos, as a red hippo suggests they knew about the so called ‘red sweat’ of the hippopotamus. As humans do, the hippo sweats during the heat of the day, but, unlike us, also when he – or she – is angry. And unlike any other animal studied the hippo even sweats under water. The red sweat has been shown to be both antimicrobial and UV protecting – a combination suncream and antiseptic, Savlon meets Soltan – and it is effective. Hippos do not have the scales of many water dwellers (in fact they share a common ancestor with whales and porpoises), and the many cuts and abrasions they endure heal remarkably quickly despite constant immersion in mud and water. According to Kimiko Hashimoto and Yoko Saikawa, who devoted an admirable seven years to studying the red sweat of the hippopotamus, the active ingredients in the sweat have been named as a combination of hipposudoric and norhipposudoric acids. These acids suffuse the red secretion which turns brown as it gradually dries.
The other ancient Egyptian god represented by the hippo is Taweret, ‘the great goddess’, who appears as a pregnant female – often, interestingly, with a crocodile on her back.
It is easy to mistake a pod of hippos for something else. I once saw what I was sure was a grey rock. In fact it was a pod of hippos in a circle with their heads on the inside of the wheel. Even at a hundred yards their line of backsides looked just like the rounded limestone boulders of the upper Nile – until they heard the splashing of our oars and came swimming over to investigate. Hippos swim at 5mph so a kayaker can outpace them, but it’ll be a close-run thing. If you are ina raft it is best to travel close to the bank even though that could be seen as an incursion into a bull’s territory. The reasoning is that even if the boat is battered on the river side you can jump off on to the land and beat a hasty retreat while the hippo eats your rubber raft. But
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