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Hippos live in the freshwater rivers and lakes of Africa. They are arguably the strongest species in the waters of the black continent. Even the notoriously ferocious Nile crocodile is often bullied by them. However, when hippos encounter lions , they become straw heroes and can be eaten by lions. Why does this happen?

Hippos and Nile crocodiles are neighbors in freshwater lakes and rivers across Africa, and hippos bully even giant crocodiles. We often see hippos chasing crocodiles in documentaries.

What is more annoying is that hippos often interfere with crocodiles’ hunts. Sometimes crocodiles attack zebras, wildebeests or impalas crossing rivers, and when they are about to succeed, hippos rush in to cause trouble, allowing the prey to take advantage of that moment to escape. Sometimes hippos will guard the corpses of their own kind and prevent crocodiles from eating them.

However, the hippo’s big mouth, huge teeth and ferocious temperament will not be effective when it comes to lions. In recent years, more and more hippos have been hunted and killed by lions. There have been reports in Masemala and Nabiro in Kenya, Kruger in South Africa, and the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

Lions hunting hippos is not the strangest thing. What is even stranger is that from the pictures and videos, hippos hardly put up any resistance when they encounter lions, but just lie or stand still waiting for death.

Hippos are often attacked by lions on land. So why do they come ashore? In fact, although hippos live in water, they eat grass on land, and they hardly eat aquatic plants. Therefore, they have to come ashore to find food. When food is scarce during the dry season, hippos can search for food as far as 4 km from the riverbank.

If a hippo lives in only one body of water, it will forage around that body of water; if it lives in two bodies of water, it will choose to forage on the land between the two bodies of water. The strong sunlight during the day is very damaging to hippos’ skin, so they choose to rest in the water during the day and come up to land at night to find food.

Hippos have very different habits between being in water and on land. When foraging on land, they go alone, going wherever food is, and they have no concept of territory when on land. In the water during the day, they gather in groups of anywhere from a few to 150, and they are extremely territorial. Both male and female hippos have their own territories, with males having larger territories.

Why are hippos only territorial when in water? This is because fresh water is so important to hippos. Compared to other herbivores, hippos have a short large intestine and no cecum – the part primarily responsible for water reabsorption.

Therefore, the water absorption efficiency of hippos is very low, and the water content in their feces is as high as 90%, so they must replenish water at any time. In order to occupy a position in the water body, hippos do not hesitate to fight any creature, and their sense of territory is especially strong in the dry season. The territorial nature of hippos is also the source of their ferocity.

Hippos herd crocodiles and interfere with crocodile hunting because of their territorial nature. In fact, hippos have no kindness to rescue weak herbivores, nor do they have any feelings for dead bodies. They just feel that the crocodile has invaded their territory, and before attacking the crocodile, they accidentally saved the crocodile’s prey.

However, when a pack of African wild dogs forces an antelope into water, the hippo will charge and chase the pack away. However, the hippo will then bite the antelope in a frenzy and shake it violently, pinning it down into the water to kill it. It can be seen that all animals that enter the water are likely to be considered invaders by the hippo and become its target, whether they are carnivores or vegetarians.

Although sensitive to sunlight, hippos also enjoy basking in the sun at certain times of the day and will sometimes take over the shoreline where crocodiles sunbathe.

This is why hippos have a tough attitude towards crocodiles, hippos are very confident in the water. However, encounters between hippos and lions are mainly on land, and this is not the hippo’s territory but the lion’s territory.

When attacked by a lion, the only way for a hippo to save itself is to quickly escape into the water. However, once the lion prevents it from entering the water, the hippo’s only choice is to stand still and wait to die.

The way lions hunt hippos is to drag the hippo away from the water, bite the hippo’s legs and back, and most hippos die from excessive blood loss. This is not a typical hunting method for lions, it is more like the hunting method of hyenas and jackals.

When on land, a single lion can also attack a hippo. However, studies have shown that lions only choose hippos as prey when they are helpless, and therefore hippos are not a frequent target of lion hunting.

Their favorite prey is buffalo, wildebeest, giraffe, zebra… Scholars have conducted research on the diet of lions across Africa, and the proportion of hippos in the lion’s diet is less than 2%.

In Kruger Park, South Africa, only 13 hippos weighing more than a ton were found killed by lions between 1954 and 2000. Compared to elephants and rhinos, hippos are much more clumsy on land. The defensive effect of hippo teeth in actual combat is not as good as that of rhinoceros tusks and horns. Hippos’ skin is relatively thin, so it is easily affected by lions.