I bet you’ve heard that Pablo Escobar had a bunch of pet hippos that, when he was killed, escaped and made little hippos. Well, there are now nearly 200 of those hippos…
The Wild Story of What Happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos [Smithsonian Magazine] – “Today, the descendants of Escobar’s hippos are believed to number nearly 200. Their uncontrolled growth threatens the region’s fragile waterways. Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer joins us to recount this strange history and explain why Colombian conservationists have embarked upon an unusual program to sterilize these hippos in the wild via “invasive surgical castration,” a procedure that is, as he has written for Smithsonian magazine, “medically complicated, expensive and sometimes dangerous for hippos as well as for the people performing it.” Then, ecologist Rebecca Lewison tells us how her long-term study of hippo populations in Africa offers hints of how these creatures will continue to alter the Colombian ecosystem—and what authorities can do about it.”