By permission of Herr Carl Hagenbeck, Hamburg.
A THREE-YEAR-OLD HIPPOPOTAMUS.
In this specimen the great lower tusks are not yet developed.
Hippopotamuses live either in families of a few individuals or in herds that may number from twenty to thirty members. Old bulls are often met with alone, and cows when about to calve will sometimes leave their companions and live for a time in seclusion, returning, however, to the herd soon after the birth of their calves. Although, owing to the shortness of its legs, a hippopotamus bull does not stand very high at the shoulder—about 4 feet 8 inches being the average height—yet its body is of enormous bulk. A male which died some years ago in the Zoological Gardens of London measured 12 feet in length from the nose to the root of the tail, and weighed 4 tons; and these dimensions are probably often exceeded in a wild state.
Photo by J. W. McLellan] [Highbury.
HIPPOPOTAMUS DRINKING.
The enormous breadth of the muzzle, as well as the small nostrils, which can be closed at will, are clearly displayed in this posture.
The huge mouth of the hippopotamus (see [Coloured Plate]), which the animal is fond of opening to its widest extent, is furnished with very large canine and incisor teeth, which are kept sharp by constantly grinding one against another, and thus enable their possessor to rapidly cut down great quantities of the coarse grass and reeds upon which these animals exclusively feed when living in uninhabited countries. When, however, their haunts are in the neighbourhood of native villages, they often commit great havoc in the corn-fields of the inhabitants, trampling down as much as they eat; and it was their fondness for sugar-cane which brought about the destruction of the last herd of hippopotamuses surviving in Natal.