The position of the animal displays the enormous capacity, and likewise the powerful lower tusks; the shortness of the limbs is also well exhibited.
By permission of Herr Carl Hagenbeck] [Hamburg.
BABY HIPPOPOTAMUS, AGED SIX MONTHS.
The flesh of a young hippopotamus is said to have an excellent flavour. Natives often follow shooting expeditions in order to secure some of its meat.
Hippopotamuses are said to be capable of remaining under water for ten or twelve minutes. Should, however, a herd of these animals be watched but not fired at from the bank of a river in which they are passing the day, they will all sink below the surface of the water as soon as they become aware of and more or less alarmed by the presence of the intruder, but each member of the herd will come up to breathe at intervals of from one to two minutes. I have seen hippopotamuses so tame and unsuspicious of danger that they allowed me—the first human being probably with any kind of hat or clothes on him that they had ever seen—to take up a position within fifty yards of them on the edge of the deep rock-bound pool in which they were resting without showing any signs of alarm. They simply stared at me in an inquisitive sort of way, raising their heads higher out of the water, and constantly twitching their little rounded ears; and it was not until a number of natives came up and began to talk loudly that they took alarm, and, sinking out of sight, retreated to the farther end of the pool. I once took the length of time with my watch for more than an hour that a hippopotamus which I was trying to shoot remained under water. This animal, a cow with a new-born calf, had made an attack upon one of my canoes. It first came up under the canoe, tilting one end of it into the air and almost filling it with water. Then it made a rush at the half-swamped craft, and, laying its huge head over it, pressed it down under the water and sank it. There were four natives in the canoe at the time of the attack, all of whom swam safely to an island in the river—the Zambesi. After the accident—which caused me a good deal of loss and inconvenience—I tried to shoot this unprovoked aggressor, but unsuccessfully, as the river was too broad to allow me to get anything but a long shot at her. The shortest time she remained under water during the seventy minutes I was paying attention to her was forty seconds, and the longest four minutes and twenty seconds—the usual time being from two to two and a half minutes. She always remained a long time under water after having been fired at.
The capsizing of canoes by these animals is quite a common occurrence on most African rivers, and the great pains the natives will take in certain districts to give these animals a wide berth seem to prove that they have good reason to dread them. Solitary bulls and cows with young calves are the most feared. Such animals will sometimes, I have been assured by the natives, tear out the side of a canoe with their teeth, and even crunch up some of its occupants whilst they are trying to save themselves by swimming. Sipopo, a chief of the Barotse tribe, who was deposed by his nephew Mona Wena in 1876, was said to have been attacked and killed by a hippopotamus whilst lying wounded amongst the reeds on the southern bank of the Zambesi, but I cannot vouch for the truth of the story.
Bull hippopotamuses must be rather quarrelsome, as I have shot several whose hides were deeply scored with wounds, no doubt inflicted by the tusks of their rivals. Once I killed a hippopotamus in a shallow lagoon amongst the swamps of the Chobi, whose enormously thick hide had been literally cut to pieces from head to tail. The entire body of this animal was covered with deep white scores, and we were unable to cut a single sjambok from its skin. We found, on examination, that this poor beast had been wounded by natives, and then in its distress most cruelly set upon by its fellows, and finally expelled from their society. It was in the last stage of emaciation, and a bullet through the brain must have been a welcome relief. On another occasion a hippopotamus bull, which I had wounded in the nose, became so furious that it dived down and attacked one of its fellows which had already been killed and was lying dead at the bottom of the pool. Seizing this latter animal by the hind leg, it brought it to the surface of the water with such a furious rush that not only half the body of the dead animal it had attacked was exposed, but the whole of its own head and shoulders came above the water. A bullet through the brain killed it instantly, and it sank to the bottom of the pool, still holding its companion's hind leg fast in its jaws.
DENTAL OPERATIONS ON A HIPPOPOTAMUS—NO. I.