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Hippopotamus

Hippopotamus amphibius · easy

The hippopotamus is more closely related to whales and dolphins than to any pig, sharing an ancestor with them roughly fifty million years ago. It is also, by most accounts, among the most dangerous large animals in Africa to encounter — territorial in water, fast on land, and equipped with tusk-like canines that keep growing throughout life.

It spends the day submerged, which is less about swimming than about skin. Hippo skin loses water rapidly in the sun, and the animal secretes a thick reddish fluid, often called blood sweat, that acts as sunscreen and has antibacterial properties. At night they leave the water to graze, walking considerable distances and cropping grass with their lips rather than their teeth.

That nightly commute makes them an important nutrient pump: they feed on land and defecate in water, moving large quantities of organic material into rivers and lakes and altering the productivity of those systems.

Despite their bulk they do not really swim, instead walking or pushing off along the bottom, and they surface to breathe automatically even while asleep. Numbers have declined with habitat loss and hunting for meat and ivory-quality teeth, particularly in central Africa.

Where it lives

Worml lists the hippopotamus as native to 14 countries — Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its habitat is rivers, lakes and adjacent grassland.

Ranges here are reduced to whole countries for playability and exclude introduced populations — see about the data for what that simplification leaves out.

In the game

Hippopotamus is rated easy. To solve the round you need to find any 7 of its 14 listed countries. How scoring works →

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