A Hippo's Life

Hippo's are not yet an endangered species but they have recently been added to the vulnerable list due to destruction of their natural habitat. Fortunately due to their size they don't really have any natural predators. That's not to say lions, hyenas and crocodiles wouldn't attack a baby hippo, they might have a go if they were hungry but they would then have to face a very angry mother hippo equipped with long, razor sharp incisors and is not afraid to use them.
Hippo's are generally placid animals and lead fairly sedentary lives, lazing at the waters edge during the day where they can submerge when it gets too hot, then grazing for around five hours each night, while its cool. Each night they would cover an area of one or two miles and travel even further from the river during the dry season when grass is not as abundant and the ground is dry and over grazed.

The groups of hippo's that live along the banks of the mara and talek river quite happily share their habitat with crocodiles. It is the large males that pose the biggest threat to other hippo's when they fight each other for the right to mate with the females and to keep hold of their territories when the water dwindles in the dry season.

It is quite relaxing watching the hippo's, its one of the few times when you are allowed out of the vehicle to sit quietly on the opposite side of the river bank to see how they behave. Female hippo's are very maternal, when out of the water the babies try to lay in the shade created by their mother. I watched one mother with two babies try to encourage  them to enter the river in a shallow area by gently nudging them in the right direction. One of the babies walked straight in, no problem and was enjoying the cool water, the other one though was having none of it, the mother would get him (or her, I'm not sure if their is an easy way to tell the gender of baby hippo's) so far then he would slip away from her pretty niftily, so she would have to start again. It was amusing to watch, after about fifteen minutes she did finally get the second baby into the water but you could see that he wasn't happy with the situation and didn't stay in for long.
It's so nice just to sit and watch as the natural world unfolds in front of you, there is nothing like it.