They’re likely to be around for a good while yet. But hippos have a typical life expectancy of 40 to 50 years, so don’t worry about the descendants of Escobar’s prize quartet. It is perhaps fitting that invasive hippos, with their 'hungry, hungry' reputations, would be the lasting legacy of one of the worlds most notorious drug lords. Instead, local environmental conservationists have settled on a mass sterilisation campaign. In October US court ruled that the ‘cocaine hippos’ are legally people, in an attempt to stop the Colombian government from killing them. But perhaps inevitably, there’s another bizarre twist. In short, the Colombian authorities are now faced with trying to reduce the hippo population. Nor are there yearly droughts to keep populations down. The hippos have been able to reproduce exceptionally rapidly because they don’t have any effective predators in their new habitat. Although there have not yet been any recorded deaths by hippo in Colombia, as numbers increase, so does the risk of them encountering humans.Īnd the situation could get even worse. The animals can apparently cause greater amounts of toxic algae, and their faeces has been killing fish species too. And they also pose a threat to humans: in Africa hippos kill up to 500 people a year. The introduction of such a significant species to an already-finely-balanced ecosystem is apparently wreaking havoc on local biodiversity. Pablo Escobars hippos were allowed to stay in the wild after his death. A hippo named lady Vanessa, who used to belong to drug lord Pablo Escobar, approaches tourists at Hacienda Nápoles, in Puerto Triunfo, Colombia, February 18, 2021. So why can’t we just leave them be, to prosper and do whatever they want? Well, it’s complicated. The cocaine hippos of drug lord Pablo Escobar recognised as people by US court, making legal history. As of 2019, there are thought to be 80 to 100 of them spread across a range of 2,250 square kilometres.ĭespite never being native to South America, it appears that the hippos have thrived in their new habitat. They remain there to this day, and their numbers have increased dramatically. When Escobar died in 1993, the hippos were deemed too difficult to seize and transport, so they were left to roam the Magdalena River, Colombia’s main waterway. They were intended purely to entertain Escobar also collected bison, ostriches and rare goats. Hippopotamuses that represent the legacy of Pablo Escobar in Colombia are at the center of a landmark case for animal rights. In the late 1970s, Escobar smuggled four hippos to his private estate near Puerto Triunfo, around 100 kilometres east of Medellín. The so-called ‘cocaine hippos’ got their name because they were brought over to the country by drug lord Pablo Escobar. What exactly is a ‘cocaine hippo’? How do they differ from normal hippos? And, most importantly, why are there even hippos in Colombia? But even now we’ve cleared that up, you’ve probably got a few more questions. When drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was killed by the Colombian National Police in 1993, he left a vast and bloody legacy in his wake. ![]() ![]() Before you get any strange ideas: no, Colombia’s ‘cocaine hippos’ are not hippos on cocaine.
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