HIPPOPOTAMUS
Anonymous (Investigtor 36, 1994 May)
Hippopotamuses existed in ancient Syria. They also lived in the Nile River of Egypt until the 12th century. The Roman writer
Pliny the
Elder seems to
imply that hippos do most of their eating in the water:
it presses its body on to it and pierces a vein in its leg, and so, by losing blood, lightens its body…" (Healy p. 119)
When films,
whether
movies or documentaries
show hippos they nearly always show them in water or by the edge of a
body
of water. Many books likewise suggest, in words or pictures, that
hippos
hardly leave the water.
For example:
The Bible calls
the
hippo "Behemoth"
and implies that it can travel and eat some distance from water:
Where all the wild beasts play." (Job 40:20) The hippo's food is vegetation: The Bible's
description of the hippo’s
eating behaviour is accurate. Hippos do indeed often feed well away
from
water, up to 15 kilometres and are able to go up steep slopes.
Cansdale (1970)
wrote:
Cansdale, G S 1970 Animals
of Bible Lands, Paternoster, Britain p.101
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