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The Wild Story of What Happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos

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Thursday, July 11, 2024

Emily Lankiewicz Four decades ago, Pablo Escobar brought to his Medellín hideaway four hippopotamuses, the centerpieces of a menagerie that included llamas, cheetahs, lions, tigers, ostriches and other exotic fauna. After Colombian police shot Escobar dead in December 1993, veterinarians removed the animals—except the hippos, which were deemed too dangerous to approach. The hippos fled to the nearby Magdalena River and multiplied. Today, the descendants of Escobar’s hippos are believed to number nearly 200. Their uncontrolled growth threatens the region’s fragile waterways. Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer joins us to recount this strange history and explain why Colombian conservationists have embarked upon an unusual program to sterilize these hippos in the wild via “invasive surgical castration,” a procedure that is, as he has written for Smithsonian magazine, “medically complicated, expensive and sometimes dangerous for hippos as well as for the people performing it.” Then, ecologist Rebecca Lewison tells us how her long-term study of hippo populations in Africa offers hints of how these creatures will continue to alter the Colombian ecosystem—and what authorities can do about it. A transcript is below. To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes on why we’re still counting calories even though that’s been largely discredited as a healthy eating tool, what the orcas tipping over yachts are really doing, and how the shocking crime perpetrated by wealthy teens Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb a century ago helped to turn true crime into a perennial subject of American public fascination, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Joshua Hammer: I can’t remember where I first heard about them. I think I must’ve had some awareness of them for the last couple of years. Chris Klimek: Josh Hammer is a journalist and author, and he’s been following a surprising story for Smithsonian magazine, one that goes all the way back to the 1980s. Hammer: That’s when the drug lord Pablo Escobar began importing exotic animals for his hacienda in Antioquia province in northwestern Colombia. Klimek: This was at the height of Pablo Escobar’s wealth and power, and the narco-terrorist wanted to live in a place that fit his larger-than-life image. Hammer: He bought a big patch of property near the Magdalena River, which is the longest river in Colombia, a jungle-y area. He cleared the area and began transforming it into his private playground and began importing these animals, most of them, we believe, from zoos in the U.S. There were kangaroos, there were dolphins for his artificial lakes, elephants. Klimek: But there was one kind of animal that unexpectedly created a wildlife crisis in northern Colombia, one that persists today—a big one. Hammer: The facts are a little murky, but it looks like he imported four hippos, three females and one male, from a zoo or some sort of wildlife refuge, or an animal breeder in either Texas or California. Klimek: You know when you buy two gerbils and then it turns into three or four or five gerbils? Well, the same thing happened with these hippos. And while Escobar eventually had to flee the area, they stuck around. Hammer: After he was killed, fleeing the police in Medellín in 1993, basically the hacienda was abandoned, and the animals fended for themselves. Then the hippos started to expand. They started to move beyond the borders of the hacienda, and here we are 40 years later, and they’re dealing with a population of about, well, rough estimate is about 200 hippos right now—and growing, obviously. Klimek: On its face, this is a pretty ridiculous situation. A drug lord’s feral hippos, swimming in the waters, eating their way through the Colombian jungles, interacting with the local populations, animal and human. But when you start to dig deeper, there’s a lot to be learned here about both the consequences of human behavior and conservation crises across the globe. From Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions, this is “There’s More to That,” the show where we’re hungry, hungry for stories about invasive hippos. In this episode, one of the most complicated wildlife puzzles in the world and what it means for both animals and humans. I’m Chris Klimek.Klimek: Hi, it’s Chris. I hope you’re enjoying “There’s More to That.” We hope that our episodes are giving you a sense of what the world of Smithsonian magazine is all about, and we’d love to hear from you what you think of this season. More importantly, we want to know what you’d like to hear more of. Your input is key. If you have the time to help us design our future episodes, please take this survey. You can find it at SmithsonianMag.com/podcastsurvey. We’ll also put a link in our show notes. It should take about five minutes. Thanks again and, as always, thanks for listening.Klimek: So since it’s been more than 30 years and not all our listeners may know, who was Pablo Escobar? Hammer: Well, Escobar was born in a working-class neighborhood of Medellín. When he was in his teens, however, he began essentially a life of crime doing things like stealing tombstones from graveyards and sanding off the names and reselling them, and just forging documents, all sorts of stuff. And then in his early 20s, he began running cocaine. I guess at the time, neighboring countries like Peru and Bolivia were producers, and he was bringing the cocaine in, processed and unprocessed, flying it up in a small plane to landing strips in the United States. And later he got involved with a couple of other Colombian dealers and formed what became known as the Medellín Cartel, which pretty much controlled all cocaine trafficking for years between Colombia and the United States. And so he grew extremely wealthy and bought his way into a seat in the Colombian parliament, and was living with total impunity and making billions of dollars until the mid-’80s, when it all caught up with him. Klimek: What was life like in Colombia during Pablo Escobar’s lifetime? Hammer: Very violent. The drug traffickers were carrying out their own terrible acts of violence in the mid-’80s. Escobar was carrying out assassinations. He had death squads killing his enemies, car bombings. In 1989, an unwitting courier carried a bomb onboard an Avianca jet, which blew up mid-flight, killed about 130 people. It was savage. On top of that, you had this escalating civil war going on between FARC, the communist, Marxist guerrilla movement in Colombia, and the Colombian government. And then on top of that, you had these, what they call the autodefensas, which were these right-wing vigilante death squads, which were often in league with drug lords. They were getting a cut of the action from the drug trade, and they were also involved in killing suspected Marxists. So there were three major violent actors all causing chaos during the ’80s and ’90s in Colombia. It was a very, very difficult time. Up to 30,000 people were being killed in a year at the peak of the violence in Colombia. Klimek: Escobar cultivated an image of power amidst the violence and turmoil. Josh says we can only speculate about how the hippos fit into that picture. Hammer: Apparently there were a couple of other drug lords in South America that he was emulating. There’s something about this kind of criminality and these menageries, there’s an association with power and prestige to have wild animals, to be the master of your own menagerie. This menagerie that he built up served another purpose, too, because he opened it up to the public. He allowed local Colombians to come onto his property and do a safari in electric vehicles around the grounds. So this, of course, helped to make him a very popular figure among a lot of Colombians when he was just spreading the money around and sponsoring soccer clubs. And then this was part of the same scheme to establish roots in the community, make him a popular figure. Klimek: Where is he keeping these animals? Hammer: He kept them on a property called Hacienda Nápoles. It’s about three hours east of Medellín. It’s a big area. He built artificial lakes and his mansion, his villa there, and he had 1,500 people working on the grounds, free-roaming menagerie of animals, helicopter pad, dinosaur theme park, just some other weird stuff. There was also a bull ring, et cetera, et cetera. Klimek: How did the hippos end up roaming freely outside of the grounds of the hacienda? Hammer: So there were never any real borders of this hacienda. It was carved out of the wilderness. So within a few days of his being killed, a lot of people stormed the grounds. They ripped everything apart looking for money, looking for weapons. The place was in chaos. The staff fled, and nobody came back to tend the animals. The animals for a while were living on their own. After it fell into disrepair, it was eventually taken over by a private corporation and reborn as a safari park. I understand from talking to an official in the local government who was a young man in those days that there were electric vehicles that would take you around and let you tour the savanna. Elephants would come over to the vehicles and stick their trunk, just like an imitation African safari. Finally, the government decided to do something about it, so this would’ve been about maybe ’98, ’99. They gathered up the animals, and they shipped most of them off to three zoos in Colombia. But nobody wanted to get near the hippos because they were frightened of them, and so the hippos were left to their own devices. By that time, there may have been 10, 12, I’m not sure, but, I mean, the females can produce a baby every year and a half, and they can be incredibly fertile. Klimek: Then an almost Shakespearean power struggle began to play out. Hammer: The oldest male born of these three female hippos wanted to be the alpha male and basically killed his own father and established a new hippo pod, and that’s the dynamic that happens. A male hippo will get in a fight with the alpha male and be exiled from the herd and then have to go off and find his own environment and wander off a few kilometers, get a female or two—boom, a new hippo herd is created. And this is what’s been happening slowly over the decades. Some of these hippos have been spotted like 50 miles outside of the boundaries of the Hacienda Nápoles. So they can really wander far. Klimek: How are the hippos in the region faring now? Hammer: I think they’re thriving. They don’t have any natural predators. They’re not hunted, and they have access to a lot of water and a lot of fruit and a lot of vegetables and a lot of vegetation, all the things that hippos need. So they’re doing very well. Klimek: And why does that present a threat to people and to the environment? Hammer: I think there is this exaggerated threat about just how dangerous hippos are. I mean, you often see media reports of them being the most dangerous animal. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think that they can be aggressive. I think generally they’re pretty gentle. It’s sort of like, you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. But from what I understand, if you get pretty dense human populations and pretty dense hippo populations competing for the same territory—fishermen on the rivers and people settling the land along the rivers—and so you get a lot of opportunities for hippo-human clashes. Last year in a schoolyard, one hippo just wandered in, and kids were scared, teachers running every which way. And if you’re on a boat, they can come up underneath and drown you. They’re not totally harmless animals. Klimek: The presence of hippos has also changed the Magdalena River itself. Hammer: Another reason that people are concerned is just because they produce an awful lot of excrement. They can really pollute water resources. They’re an invasive species. They don’t really belong there. So the local species that are there, like the capybaras, the tortoises, other animals, it’s rapidly changing the biome and possibly threatening these other animals. Algae, bacteriological contamination, there definitely seems to be something going on with the water in Colombia in these areas. Klimek: How have authorities tried to solve the problem of this exploding hippo population in Colombia? Hammer: The first thing they did was way back in the early 2000s, a professional hunter was hired, and he actually shot and killed a hippo that had wandered about 50 miles or so outside the hacienda and then posed with the corpse of his hippo, and it created a huge uproar in Colombia. I believe this was 2008, maybe 2009. Then there was a series of protests in Bogotá, and all across Colombia people were outraged and distraught. The minister of the environment had to resign, and they basically declared a moratorium on killing hippos. They started to try to dart hippos in the wild and do these castrations. That didn’t really work, because the tranquilizers take a while to have an effect, and it was dangerous to follow these hippos around, and so the hippos would generally disappear. They managed to do this once. They were able to track a hippo and castrate it after the tranquilizer knocked him out. And then they tried chemical castrations, where they would dart it with a chemical. But the problem with that method is that they would have to use a two-step process, and it was almost impossible to track the hippo to deliver the second dart two months later. So that didn’t work. They tried to cordon off the hacienda, but that didn’t work either, because first of all, many of the hippos had already left the hacienda, and second of all, the property was too large. They couldn’t really construct anything strong enough to keep the animals in, so that didn’t work. They tried getting international zoos to take the hippos, and that created a huge protest among environmental groups who didn’t believe that the resources should be spent with this translocation program. And most zoos didn’t want them anyway, so that didn’t work. Finally, last year, they began this aggressive surgical castration campaign using traps and corrals and trying to lure the animals into these corrals, keeping them trapped, and then sterilizing them on the spot, and that has had a certain amount of success. So they’ve done about ten so far. The project began in earnest in October, and from what I understand, they were forced to stop for a couple of months because of a contract renegotiation and budget disputes. But now they apparently have picked it up again. So it’s averaging one and a half a month or something. They say that they need to sterilize at least 40 a year to keep the population from growing. So they’re falling short, and it’s a really difficult procedure. They’re getting better at it, clearly, but it still doesn’t seem to be sufficient to deal with the numbers.Rebecca Lewison: I remember somebody telling me, and I thought, “What? That can’t be right. There’s no way. How would there be hippos in Colombia?” Klimek: Rebecca Lewison is an ecologist at San Diego State University. She’s also co-chair of the Hippo Specialist Group of IUCN, an international conservation organization. She mostly spends her time worrying about hippos in Africa, but at some point in the late ’90s or early 2000s, she started getting inquiries about the Colombian hippos. Lewison: I’ve never been to Colombia, but what it looks like is a paradise for hippos, water everywhere, grass everywhere. I mean, I can see why they are thriving. Klimek: We went to Rebecca for some more in-depth information about hippo biology, conservation, and some ideas for a potential solution in Colombia. But we began the conversation by asking: What’s it like to see a hippo up close in the wild? Lewison: It’s just like, “Oh, my God, they’re so big,” which is kind of dumb, since you know they’re this massive animal. But when you first see them in the water, you just see that the top surface of their heads and their backs, and then when they actually come out, it’s the iceberg, there’s a lot under there. Klimek: What makes it hard to study hippos in the wild? Lewison: The challenge with hippos in the wild is when you go to a place that has hippos, they’re seemingly everywhere, which is not, of course, really true, but you’ll see a lot of them. They all come together and bunch up in rivers or lakes, but they’re really tough to study. And so compared to even other big gray things like elephants and rhinos, we really know comparatively little about them, because they are essentially marine mammals. They’re in the water all day and they only come out at night to feed. So nighttime is a tough time to be doing fieldwork, not super safe, and most of the places where they’re in the water, you can’t get in there with them. It’s a hundred percent not safe either because of hippos or because of crocodiles, and the water is not clear, so we don’t really know what’s happening. Other things that make them really hard to study is they basically don’t have a neck. So most of the ways that we put collars on animals, it goes around their neck, and they don’t have a neck. They use their neck, and so collaring them doesn’t really work. And in another just crazy turn of events, they are very difficult to chemically immobilize or tranquilize. We don’t really understand it, but they tend to not do well with all the drugs that we use for elephants and rhinos. It’s just made it really hard to study them and learn really basic things like who’s related to who. Identifying individuals is really tough, because we don’t really see much of them. Counting hippos is really hard, and you’d say, “Well, why? They’re massive, 4,000, 5,000 pounds.” But they’re in the water, and counting things in the water is really tough. They submerge. They don’t just stay. It’s not like you can say, “OK, everybody out of the water. I have to count you.” We’re increasingly using drones, but even with that, that can cause disturbance, so maybe a hippo will go underwater. Klimek: What’s the biggest threat to hippos in their native habitat now? Lewison: The biggest threat is definitely habitat loss. They require freshwater, and that really puts them at the crosshairs of people who also really rely on freshwater. And that’s probably the most valuable and limited resource on Earth, is freshwater, and it really puts them in direct conflict with people. Right behind that is a threat that is here but is potentially intensifying, which is just the impacts of climate change, because we know that impacts water quality and quantity. But I think it really all of that boils down to they just are running out of places to be. Klimek: Where are global hippo populations now, generally? Lewison: We don’t have great, great counts of them, but we think there’s about 200,000 to 300,000, which is surprisingly few. That’s even less elephants than there are. From a conservation perspective, there’s certainly populations in countries where hippo populations seem to be stable—those are typically in eastern and southern Africa—and definitely countries where hippo populations are declining, which is absolutely in western African countries. And in large part that is actually driven by just large-scale habitat loss. So overall the conservation outlook is not great. They are listed on the IUCN Red List, which is our international way of keeping track of the conservation status of animals, and they are listed as vulnerable because of that. And just increasingly, we just have concerns about their viability going forward. Klimek: The hippo situation in Colombia is completely unprecedented, so Rebecca says she has to look to African hippos for answers about what’s going on. Lewison: Hippos in Africa really exhibit this sort of boom-bust cycle oftentimes, particularly in places where the water and grass resources vary a lot within a year, which is a lot of places in eastern, southern Africa that have a dry season and a wet season. When there’s a drought, hippo populations can crash, a lot of mortality, both of adults and absolutely of juveniles because of either not enough water or not enough resources. What we also see for hippo populations, which is what makes a lot of us optimistic for a future for hippos, is that they respond very well to good conditions. When there’s a lot of rain and a lot of water, we see hippo populations flourish and really grow and expand and increase very quickly, and that’s certainly what they seem to have in Colombia. One thing that I think is interesting in Colombia is I think they’re spending a lot more time out of the water than hippos do in Africa, in part because the climate, it’s humid, it’s much more forgiving for a hippo. They have pretty sensitive skin, which is funny to say because they also are known to have some of the thickest skin, but there’s some sensitivity around them. Without water, they will die, or moisture, but I think they have that. And so maybe that’s another reason that people are really connecting to them is they can see them so much more than you can in the African context. Klimek: Many places, non-native animal populations have been controlled by introducing predator species. Why would that not work here? Lewison: I just don’t know what you’d introduce. The largest predator to the hippo, the most pervasive threat from predation for hippos is people. It is true that in Africa, lions, they will hunt younger hippos, smaller hippos. I don’t think we want to introduce African lions to Colombia. They certainly have their own carnivores, but it’s just not going to happen. There just isn’t anything bigger. Dinosaurs? We’ve all seen that movie, so we know how that goes. We don’t have an option here of going up the food chain. Their skin is that thick. Save with a gun, they’re pretty hard to kill, and I don’t think there’s going to be a strategy to introduce anything that’s big enough to get them. And honestly, predation just doesn’t have a big impact even in African settings. It’s really the environment that controls hippo populations. Klimek: How do you feel about the possibility of culling these hippos? Should that be considered as a potential solution? Lewison: It’s a tough question, again, because of how I think folks in the area have really identified with the hippos, absolutely are concerned about animal welfare, and I obviously take all of that very seriously as well. I just don’t think at this point there’s any really good solutions. The good solution needed to come in 1993, and we’re way beyond that. So now the situation where we are, the fork in the road, I do think that this approach makes sense. I honestly do worry about the potential of hippo-human conflict. I’ve spent a lot of time with hippos. I don’t find them to be particularly aggressive, but in areas where they are constantly under pressure, the analogy I typically use, the first time someone, if they break into your house, you’re surprised. By time ten, if someone breaks into your house, you’re ready to attack. And I think that’s where we see a lot of hippo-human conflict that have led to human fatalities. Typically, I’m one of the people that when there is an attack that people call and say, “What can you tell us? What should we do?” And in the African settings, I think I wouldn’t get in a boat, in a canoe. I’m not interested in those trips because I am the person who hears about all of them that go south. I feel differently about being on land around hippos, but in the water in particular, there’s not much you can do. If a hippo is under threat and they’re coming for you, that’s not the time to be saying, “Well, what could I have done differently in this situation?” But yeah, there really aren’t any easy answers here in terms of protecting people, which I think is the most at the top of the list. Of course, protecting hippos, but I would put in front of that even protecting the native plants and animals. This is their national treasure and something that I know they want to protect. Klimek: So taking into account everything you’ve been saying about how this is a complex problem and none of the potential solutions are particularly good, what would be your recommendation as to how to balance human needs and wildlife needs? Lewison: I think we’re on the path. The folks that I’ve talked to and heard from are trying to be thoughtful to all of the sides, to the people who feel connected to the animals, obviously to the animals themselves and their welfare, but also to the native plants and animals. And I think we are now hopefully moving toward the place of making this somewhat more sustainable. Of course, I have those fears of potential conflict if the population does grow. You hear stories of people getting gored by bison in Yellowstone. That’s because people do dumb things around wild animals. And even though these are animals that are not from here, they are still wild. What I always want people to understand is the place where hippos are from is Africa, and the place where they really need desperate attention and support and conservation action is Africa, because while they’re thriving in Colombia, they are not thriving in the land where they have evolved. And that’s where I spend most of my time, is really trying to get organizations and governments and agencies to collaborate and coordinate so we can come up with sustainable conservation plans that absolutely protect people and their livelihoods and hippos and their ability to persist into the future. I love that there’s a whole new group of people who didn’t even know about hippos, had never even thought about them, and now care about them, and I just hope that that extends to caring about hippos where they’re from. Klimek: Rebecca Lewison is a conservation ecologist and professor at San Diego State University. She’s the director of SDSU’s Institute for Ecological Management and Monitoring. Thank you, Rebecca. This has been a fascinating talk. Lewison: Great to talk with you, Chris. Thanks so much.Klimek: To read Josh Hammer’s reporting about the Colombian hippos, go to SmithsonianMag.com. We’ll put a link to it in our show notes along with links to some of Lewison’s work. This week’s dinner party fact goes back to a time and place where hippos were presented as a potential solution to a problem rather than the cause of one—equally shocking, though. Donny Bajohr: Hey, everyone. I’m Donny Bajohr, one of three photo editors here at the magazine, and I have a tasty treat for you for this episode’s dinner party fact. In the early 20th century, America had a problem—actually, two problems. They had a meat shortage and they had an invasive species in the South, the hyacinth. So Congressman Robert Broussard brought a bill to the House to solve both problems with one animal: the hippo. He wanted to bring over the hippo to eat up some hyacinth and feed Americans. Congressman Broussard’s bill didn’t pass, but it’s too bad, because I would love to hang a fang in some hippo meat. Klimek (laughing): “Hang a fang!” Did you just come up with that? Bajohr: You never heard that phrase? Klimek: No. “Hang a fang.” I love it. Klimek: “There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is me, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rozas Rivera, Ry Dorsey and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Our episode artwork is by Emily Lankiewicz. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music. I’m Chris Klimek. Thank you for listening. Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

Ever since the demise of infamous drug kingpin, his pet hippos have flourished, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem and terrorizing local communities

Smithmag-Podcast-S02-Ep11-Hippo-article.jpg
Emily Lankiewicz

Four decades ago, Pablo Escobar brought to his Medellín hideaway four hippopotamuses, the centerpieces of a menagerie that included llamas, cheetahs, lions, tigers, ostriches and other exotic fauna. After Colombian police shot Escobar dead in December 1993, veterinarians removed the animals—except the hippos, which were deemed too dangerous to approach. The hippos fled to the nearby Magdalena River and multiplied.

Today, the descendants of Escobar’s hippos are believed to number nearly 200. Their uncontrolled growth threatens the region’s fragile waterways. Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer joins us to recount this strange history and explain why Colombian conservationists have embarked upon an unusual program to sterilize these hippos in the wild via “invasive surgical castration,” a procedure that is, as he has written for Smithsonian magazine, “medically complicated, expensive and sometimes dangerous for hippos as well as for the people performing it.” Then, ecologist Rebecca Lewison tells us how her long-term study of hippo populations in Africa offers hints of how these creatures will continue to alter the Colombian ecosystem—and what authorities can do about it.

A transcript is below. To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes on why we’re still counting calories even though that’s been largely discredited as a healthy eating tool, what the orcas tipping over yachts are really doing, and how the shocking crime perpetrated by wealthy teens Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb a century ago helped to turn true crime into a perennial subject of American public fascination, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.


Joshua Hammer: I can’t remember where I first heard about them. I think I must’ve had some awareness of them for the last couple of years.

Chris Klimek: Josh Hammer is a journalist and author, and he’s been following a surprising story for Smithsonian magazine, one that goes all the way back to the 1980s.

Hammer: That’s when the drug lord Pablo Escobar began importing exotic animals for his hacienda in Antioquia province in northwestern Colombia.

Klimek: This was at the height of Pablo Escobar’s wealth and power, and the narco-terrorist wanted to live in a place that fit his larger-than-life image.

Hammer: He bought a big patch of property near the Magdalena River, which is the longest river in Colombia, a jungle-y area. He cleared the area and began transforming it into his private playground and began importing these animals, most of them, we believe, from zoos in the U.S. There were kangaroos, there were dolphins for his artificial lakes, elephants.

Klimek: But there was one kind of animal that unexpectedly created a wildlife crisis in northern Colombia, one that persists today—a big one.

Hammer: The facts are a little murky, but it looks like he imported four hippos, three females and one male, from a zoo or some sort of wildlife refuge, or an animal breeder in either Texas or California.

Klimek: You know when you buy two gerbils and then it turns into three or four or five gerbils? Well, the same thing happened with these hippos. And while Escobar eventually had to flee the area, they stuck around.

Hammer: After he was killed, fleeing the police in Medellín in 1993, basically the hacienda was abandoned, and the animals fended for themselves. Then the hippos started to expand. They started to move beyond the borders of the hacienda, and here we are 40 years later, and they’re dealing with a population of about, well, rough estimate is about 200 hippos right now—and growing, obviously.

Klimek: On its face, this is a pretty ridiculous situation. A drug lord’s feral hippos, swimming in the waters, eating their way through the Colombian jungles, interacting with the local populations, animal and human. But when you start to dig deeper, there’s a lot to be learned here about both the consequences of human behavior and conservation crises across the globe.

From Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions, this is “There’s More to That,” the show where we’re hungry, hungry for stories about invasive hippos. In this episode, one of the most complicated wildlife puzzles in the world and what it means for both animals and humans. I’m Chris Klimek.


Klimek: Hi, it’s Chris. I hope you’re enjoying “There’s More to That.” We hope that our episodes are giving you a sense of what the world of Smithsonian magazine is all about, and we’d love to hear from you what you think of this season. More importantly, we want to know what you’d like to hear more of. Your input is key. If you have the time to help us design our future episodes, please take this survey. You can find it at SmithsonianMag.com/podcastsurvey. We’ll also put a link in our show notes. It should take about five minutes. Thanks again and, as always, thanks for listening.


Klimek: So since it’s been more than 30 years and not all our listeners may know, who was Pablo Escobar?

Hammer: Well, Escobar was born in a working-class neighborhood of Medellín. When he was in his teens, however, he began essentially a life of crime doing things like stealing tombstones from graveyards and sanding off the names and reselling them, and just forging documents, all sorts of stuff. And then in his early 20s, he began running cocaine.

I guess at the time, neighboring countries like Peru and Bolivia were producers, and he was bringing the cocaine in, processed and unprocessed, flying it up in a small plane to landing strips in the United States. And later he got involved with a couple of other Colombian dealers and formed what became known as the Medellín Cartel, which pretty much controlled all cocaine trafficking for years between Colombia and the United States. And so he grew extremely wealthy and bought his way into a seat in the Colombian parliament, and was living with total impunity and making billions of dollars until the mid-’80s, when it all caught up with him.

Klimek: What was life like in Colombia during Pablo Escobar’s lifetime?

Hammer: Very violent. The drug traffickers were carrying out their own terrible acts of violence in the mid-’80s. Escobar was carrying out assassinations. He had death squads killing his enemies, car bombings. In 1989, an unwitting courier carried a bomb onboard an Avianca jet, which blew up mid-flight, killed about 130 people. It was savage.

On top of that, you had this escalating civil war going on between FARC, the communist, Marxist guerrilla movement in Colombia, and the Colombian government. And then on top of that, you had these, what they call the autodefensas, which were these right-wing vigilante death squads, which were often in league with drug lords. They were getting a cut of the action from the drug trade, and they were also involved in killing suspected Marxists. So there were three major violent actors all causing chaos during the ’80s and ’90s in Colombia. It was a very, very difficult time. Up to 30,000 people were being killed in a year at the peak of the violence in Colombia.

Klimek: Escobar cultivated an image of power amidst the violence and turmoil. Josh says we can only speculate about how the hippos fit into that picture.

Hammer: Apparently there were a couple of other drug lords in South America that he was emulating. There’s something about this kind of criminality and these menageries, there’s an association with power and prestige to have wild animals, to be the master of your own menagerie. This menagerie that he built up served another purpose, too, because he opened it up to the public.

He allowed local Colombians to come onto his property and do a safari in electric vehicles around the grounds. So this, of course, helped to make him a very popular figure among a lot of Colombians when he was just spreading the money around and sponsoring soccer clubs. And then this was part of the same scheme to establish roots in the community, make him a popular figure.

Klimek: Where is he keeping these animals?

Hammer: He kept them on a property called Hacienda Nápoles. It’s about three hours east of Medellín. It’s a big area. He built artificial lakes and his mansion, his villa there, and he had 1,500 people working on the grounds, free-roaming menagerie of animals, helicopter pad, dinosaur theme park, just some other weird stuff. There was also a bull ring, et cetera, et cetera.

Klimek: How did the hippos end up roaming freely outside of the grounds of the hacienda?

Hammer: So there were never any real borders of this hacienda. It was carved out of the wilderness. So within a few days of his being killed, a lot of people stormed the grounds. They ripped everything apart looking for money, looking for weapons. The place was in chaos. The staff fled, and nobody came back to tend the animals.

The animals for a while were living on their own. After it fell into disrepair, it was eventually taken over by a private corporation and reborn as a safari park. I understand from talking to an official in the local government who was a young man in those days that there were electric vehicles that would take you around and let you tour the savanna. Elephants would come over to the vehicles and stick their trunk, just like an imitation African safari.

Finally, the government decided to do something about it, so this would’ve been about maybe ’98, ’99. They gathered up the animals, and they shipped most of them off to three zoos in Colombia. But nobody wanted to get near the hippos because they were frightened of them, and so the hippos were left to their own devices. By that time, there may have been 10, 12, I’m not sure, but, I mean, the females can produce a baby every year and a half, and they can be incredibly fertile.

Klimek: Then an almost Shakespearean power struggle began to play out.

Hammer: The oldest male born of these three female hippos wanted to be the alpha male and basically killed his own father and established a new hippo pod, and that’s the dynamic that happens. A male hippo will get in a fight with the alpha male and be exiled from the herd and then have to go off and find his own environment and wander off a few kilometers, get a female or two—boom, a new hippo herd is created. And this is what’s been happening slowly over the decades. Some of these hippos have been spotted like 50 miles outside of the boundaries of the Hacienda Nápoles. So they can really wander far.

Klimek: How are the hippos in the region faring now?

Hammer: I think they’re thriving. They don’t have any natural predators. They’re not hunted, and they have access to a lot of water and a lot of fruit and a lot of vegetables and a lot of vegetation, all the things that hippos need. So they’re doing very well.

Klimek: And why does that present a threat to people and to the environment?

Hammer: I think there is this exaggerated threat about just how dangerous hippos are. I mean, you often see media reports of them being the most dangerous animal. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think that they can be aggressive. I think generally they’re pretty gentle. It’s sort of like, you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.

But from what I understand, if you get pretty dense human populations and pretty dense hippo populations competing for the same territory—fishermen on the rivers and people settling the land along the rivers—and so you get a lot of opportunities for hippo-human clashes. Last year in a schoolyard, one hippo just wandered in, and kids were scared, teachers running every which way. And if you’re on a boat, they can come up underneath and drown you. They’re not totally harmless animals.

Klimek: The presence of hippos has also changed the Magdalena River itself.

Hammer: Another reason that people are concerned is just because they produce an awful lot of excrement. They can really pollute water resources. They’re an invasive species. They don’t really belong there. So the local species that are there, like the capybaras, the tortoises, other animals, it’s rapidly changing the biome and possibly threatening these other animals. Algae, bacteriological contamination, there definitely seems to be something going on with the water in Colombia in these areas.

Klimek: How have authorities tried to solve the problem of this exploding hippo population in Colombia?

Hammer: The first thing they did was way back in the early 2000s, a professional hunter was hired, and he actually shot and killed a hippo that had wandered about 50 miles or so outside the hacienda and then posed with the corpse of his hippo, and it created a huge uproar in Colombia. I believe this was 2008, maybe 2009. Then there was a series of protests in Bogotá, and all across Colombia people were outraged and distraught. The minister of the environment had to resign, and they basically declared a moratorium on killing hippos.

They started to try to dart hippos in the wild and do these castrations. That didn’t really work, because the tranquilizers take a while to have an effect, and it was dangerous to follow these hippos around, and so the hippos would generally disappear. They managed to do this once. They were able to track a hippo and castrate it after the tranquilizer knocked him out.

And then they tried chemical castrations, where they would dart it with a chemical. But the problem with that method is that they would have to use a two-step process, and it was almost impossible to track the hippo to deliver the second dart two months later. So that didn’t work.

They tried to cordon off the hacienda, but that didn’t work either, because first of all, many of the hippos had already left the hacienda, and second of all, the property was too large. They couldn’t really construct anything strong enough to keep the animals in, so that didn’t work.

They tried getting international zoos to take the hippos, and that created a huge protest among environmental groups who didn’t believe that the resources should be spent with this translocation program. And most zoos didn’t want them anyway, so that didn’t work.

Finally, last year, they began this aggressive surgical castration campaign using traps and corrals and trying to lure the animals into these corrals, keeping them trapped, and then sterilizing them on the spot, and that has had a certain amount of success. So they’ve done about ten so far. The project began in earnest in October, and from what I understand, they were forced to stop for a couple of months because of a contract renegotiation and budget disputes.

But now they apparently have picked it up again. So it’s averaging one and a half a month or something. They say that they need to sterilize at least 40 a year to keep the population from growing. So they’re falling short, and it’s a really difficult procedure. They’re getting better at it, clearly, but it still doesn’t seem to be sufficient to deal with the numbers.


Rebecca Lewison: I remember somebody telling me, and I thought, “What? That can’t be right. There’s no way. How would there be hippos in Colombia?”

Klimek: Rebecca Lewison is an ecologist at San Diego State University. She’s also co-chair of the Hippo Specialist Group of IUCN, an international conservation organization. She mostly spends her time worrying about hippos in Africa, but at some point in the late ’90s or early 2000s, she started getting inquiries about the Colombian hippos.

Lewison: I’ve never been to Colombia, but what it looks like is a paradise for hippos, water everywhere, grass everywhere. I mean, I can see why they are thriving.

Klimek: We went to Rebecca for some more in-depth information about hippo biology, conservation, and some ideas for a potential solution in Colombia. But we began the conversation by asking: What’s it like to see a hippo up close in the wild?

Lewison: It’s just like, “Oh, my God, they’re so big,” which is kind of dumb, since you know they’re this massive animal. But when you first see them in the water, you just see that the top surface of their heads and their backs, and then when they actually come out, it’s the iceberg, there’s a lot under there.

Klimek: What makes it hard to study hippos in the wild?

Lewison: The challenge with hippos in the wild is when you go to a place that has hippos, they’re seemingly everywhere, which is not, of course, really true, but you’ll see a lot of them. They all come together and bunch up in rivers or lakes, but they’re really tough to study. And so compared to even other big gray things like elephants and rhinos, we really know comparatively little about them, because they are essentially marine mammals. They’re in the water all day and they only come out at night to feed.

So nighttime is a tough time to be doing fieldwork, not super safe, and most of the places where they’re in the water, you can’t get in there with them. It’s a hundred percent not safe either because of hippos or because of crocodiles, and the water is not clear, so we don’t really know what’s happening.

Other things that make them really hard to study is they basically don’t have a neck. So most of the ways that we put collars on animals, it goes around their neck, and they don’t have a neck. They use their neck, and so collaring them doesn’t really work.

And in another just crazy turn of events, they are very difficult to chemically immobilize or tranquilize. We don’t really understand it, but they tend to not do well with all the drugs that we use for elephants and rhinos. It’s just made it really hard to study them and learn really basic things like who’s related to who.

Identifying individuals is really tough, because we don’t really see much of them. Counting hippos is really hard, and you’d say, “Well, why? They’re massive, 4,000, 5,000 pounds.” But they’re in the water, and counting things in the water is really tough. They submerge. They don’t just stay. It’s not like you can say, “OK, everybody out of the water. I have to count you.” We’re increasingly using drones, but even with that, that can cause disturbance, so maybe a hippo will go underwater.

Klimek: What’s the biggest threat to hippos in their native habitat now?

Lewison: The biggest threat is definitely habitat loss. They require freshwater, and that really puts them at the crosshairs of people who also really rely on freshwater. And that’s probably the most valuable and limited resource on Earth, is freshwater, and it really puts them in direct conflict with people.

Right behind that is a threat that is here but is potentially intensifying, which is just the impacts of climate change, because we know that impacts water quality and quantity. But I think it really all of that boils down to they just are running out of places to be.

Klimek: Where are global hippo populations now, generally?

Lewison: We don’t have great, great counts of them, but we think there’s about 200,000 to 300,000, which is surprisingly few. That’s even less elephants than there are. From a conservation perspective, there’s certainly populations in countries where hippo populations seem to be stable—those are typically in eastern and southern Africa—and definitely countries where hippo populations are declining, which is absolutely in western African countries. And in large part that is actually driven by just large-scale habitat loss.

So overall the conservation outlook is not great. They are listed on the IUCN Red List, which is our international way of keeping track of the conservation status of animals, and they are listed as vulnerable because of that. And just increasingly, we just have concerns about their viability going forward.

Klimek: The hippo situation in Colombia is completely unprecedented, so Rebecca says she has to look to African hippos for answers about what’s going on.

Lewison: Hippos in Africa really exhibit this sort of boom-bust cycle oftentimes, particularly in places where the water and grass resources vary a lot within a year, which is a lot of places in eastern, southern Africa that have a dry season and a wet season. When there’s a drought, hippo populations can crash, a lot of mortality, both of adults and absolutely of juveniles because of either not enough water or not enough resources.

What we also see for hippo populations, which is what makes a lot of us optimistic for a future for hippos, is that they respond very well to good conditions. When there’s a lot of rain and a lot of water, we see hippo populations flourish and really grow and expand and increase very quickly, and that’s certainly what they seem to have in Colombia.

One thing that I think is interesting in Colombia is I think they’re spending a lot more time out of the water than hippos do in Africa, in part because the climate, it’s humid, it’s much more forgiving for a hippo. They have pretty sensitive skin, which is funny to say because they also are known to have some of the thickest skin, but there’s some sensitivity around them. Without water, they will die, or moisture, but I think they have that. And so maybe that’s another reason that people are really connecting to them is they can see them so much more than you can in the African context.

Klimek: Many places, non-native animal populations have been controlled by introducing predator species. Why would that not work here?

Lewison: I just don’t know what you’d introduce. The largest predator to the hippo, the most pervasive threat from predation for hippos is people. It is true that in Africa, lions, they will hunt younger hippos, smaller hippos. I don’t think we want to introduce African lions to Colombia. They certainly have their own carnivores, but it’s just not going to happen. There just isn’t anything bigger. Dinosaurs? We’ve all seen that movie, so we know how that goes.

We don’t have an option here of going up the food chain. Their skin is that thick. Save with a gun, they’re pretty hard to kill, and I don’t think there’s going to be a strategy to introduce anything that’s big enough to get them. And honestly, predation just doesn’t have a big impact even in African settings. It’s really the environment that controls hippo populations.

Klimek: How do you feel about the possibility of culling these hippos? Should that be considered as a potential solution?

Lewison: It’s a tough question, again, because of how I think folks in the area have really identified with the hippos, absolutely are concerned about animal welfare, and I obviously take all of that very seriously as well. I just don’t think at this point there’s any really good solutions. The good solution needed to come in 1993, and we’re way beyond that. So now the situation where we are, the fork in the road, I do think that this approach makes sense.

I honestly do worry about the potential of hippo-human conflict. I’ve spent a lot of time with hippos. I don’t find them to be particularly aggressive, but in areas where they are constantly under pressure, the analogy I typically use, the first time someone, if they break into your house, you’re surprised. By time ten, if someone breaks into your house, you’re ready to attack. And I think that’s where we see a lot of hippo-human conflict that have led to human fatalities.

Typically, I’m one of the people that when there is an attack that people call and say, “What can you tell us? What should we do?” And in the African settings, I think I wouldn’t get in a boat, in a canoe. I’m not interested in those trips because I am the person who hears about all of them that go south. I feel differently about being on land around hippos, but in the water in particular, there’s not much you can do. If a hippo is under threat and they’re coming for you, that’s not the time to be saying, “Well, what could I have done differently in this situation?”

But yeah, there really aren’t any easy answers here in terms of protecting people, which I think is the most at the top of the list. Of course, protecting hippos, but I would put in front of that even protecting the native plants and animals. This is their national treasure and something that I know they want to protect.

Klimek: So taking into account everything you’ve been saying about how this is a complex problem and none of the potential solutions are particularly good, what would be your recommendation as to how to balance human needs and wildlife needs?

Lewison: I think we’re on the path. The folks that I’ve talked to and heard from are trying to be thoughtful to all of the sides, to the people who feel connected to the animals, obviously to the animals themselves and their welfare, but also to the native plants and animals. And I think we are now hopefully moving toward the place of making this somewhat more sustainable. Of course, I have those fears of potential conflict if the population does grow. You hear stories of people getting gored by bison in Yellowstone. That’s because people do dumb things around wild animals. And even though these are animals that are not from here, they are still wild.

What I always want people to understand is the place where hippos are from is Africa, and the place where they really need desperate attention and support and conservation action is Africa, because while they’re thriving in Colombia, they are not thriving in the land where they have evolved. And that’s where I spend most of my time, is really trying to get organizations and governments and agencies to collaborate and coordinate so we can come up with sustainable conservation plans that absolutely protect people and their livelihoods and hippos and their ability to persist into the future.

I love that there’s a whole new group of people who didn’t even know about hippos, had never even thought about them, and now care about them, and I just hope that that extends to caring about hippos where they’re from.

Klimek: Rebecca Lewison is a conservation ecologist and professor at San Diego State University. She’s the director of SDSU’s Institute for Ecological Management and Monitoring. Thank you, Rebecca. This has been a fascinating talk.

Lewison: Great to talk with you, Chris. Thanks so much.


Klimek: To read Josh Hammer’s reporting about the Colombian hippos, go to SmithsonianMag.com. We’ll put a link to it in our show notes along with links to some of Lewison’s work. This week’s dinner party fact goes back to a time and place where hippos were presented as a potential solution to a problem rather than the cause of one—equally shocking, though.

Donny Bajohr: Hey, everyone. I’m Donny Bajohr, one of three photo editors here at the magazine, and I have a tasty treat for you for this episode’s dinner party fact. In the early 20th century, America had a problem—actually, two problems. They had a meat shortage and they had an invasive species in the South, the hyacinth. So Congressman Robert Broussard brought a bill to the House to solve both problems with one animal: the hippo. He wanted to bring over the hippo to eat up some hyacinth and feed Americans. Congressman Broussard’s bill didn’t pass, but it’s too bad, because I would love to hang a fang in some hippo meat.

Klimek (laughing): “Hang a fang!” Did you just come up with that?

Bajohr: You never heard that phrase?

Klimek: No. “Hang a fang.” I love it.

Klimek: “There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is me, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rozas Rivera, Ry Dorsey and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Our episode artwork is by Emily Lankiewicz. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.

I’m Chris Klimek. Thank you for listening.

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Lifesize herd of puppet animals begins climate action journey from Africa to Arctic Circle

The Herds project from the team behind Little Amal will travel 20,000km taking its message on environmental crisis across the worldHundreds of life-size animal puppets have begun a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle as part of an ambitious project created by the team behind Little Amal, the giant puppet of a Syrian girl that travelled across the world.The public art initiative called The Herds, which has already visited Kinshasa and Lagos, will travel to 20 cities over four months to raise awareness of the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Hundreds of life-size animal puppets have begun a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle as part of an ambitious project created by the team behind Little Amal, the giant puppet of a Syrian girl that travelled across the world.The public art initiative called The Herds, which has already visited Kinshasa and Lagos, will travel to 20 cities over four months to raise awareness of the climate crisis.It is the second major project from The Walk Productions, which introduced Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet, to the world in Gaziantep, near the Turkey-Syria border, in 2021. The award-winning project, co-founded by the Palestinian playwright and director Amir Nizar Zuabi, reached 2 million people in 17 countries as she travelled from Turkey to the UK.The Herds’ journey began in Kinshasa’s Botanical Gardens on 10 April, kicking off four days of events. It moved on to Lagos, Nigeria, the following week, where up to 5,000 people attended events performed by more than 60 puppeteers.On Friday the streets of Dakar in Senegal will be filled with more than 40 puppet zebras, wildebeest, monkeys, giraffes and baboons as they run through Médina, one of the busiest neighbourhoods, where they will encounter a creation by Fabrice Monteiro, a Belgium-born artist who lives in Senegal, and is known for his large-scale sculptures. On Saturday the puppets will be part of an event in the fishing village of Ngor.The Herds’ 20,000km journey began in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photograph: Berclaire/walk productionsThe first set of animal puppets was created by Ukwanda Puppetry and Designs Art Collective in Cape Town using recycled materials, but in each location local volunteers are taught how to make their own animals using prototypes provided by Ukwanda. The project has already attracted huge interest from people keen to get involved. In Dakar more than 300 artists applied for 80 roles as artists and puppet guides. About 2,000 people will be trained to make the puppets over the duration of the project.“The idea is that we’re migrating with an ever-evolving, growing group of animals,” Zuabi told the Guardian last year.Zuabi has spoken of The Herds as a continuation of Little Amal’s journey, which was inspired by refugees, who often cite climate disaster as a trigger for forced migration. The Herds will put the environmental emergency centre stage, and will encourage communities to launch their own events to discuss the significance of the project and get involved in climate activism.The puppets are created with recycled materials and local volunteers are taught how to make them in each location. Photograph: Ant Strack“The idea is to put in front of people that there is an emergency – not with scientific facts, but with emotions,” said The Herds’ Senegal producer, Sarah Desbois.She expects thousands of people to view the four events being staged over the weekend. “We don’t have a tradition of puppetry in Senegal. As soon as the project started, when people were shown pictures of the puppets, they were going crazy.”Little Amal, the puppet of a Syrian girl that has become a symbol of human rights, in Santiago, Chile on 3 January. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesGrowing as it moves, The Herds will make its way from Dakar to Morocco, then into Europe, including London and Paris, arriving in the Arctic Circle in early August.

Dead, sick pelicans turning up along Oregon coast

So far, no signs of bird flu but wildlife officials continue to test the birds.

Sick and dead pelicans are turning up on Oregon’s coast and state wildlife officials say they don’t yet know why. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife says it has collected several dead brown pelican carcasses for testing. Lab results from two pelicans found in Newport have come back negative for highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as bird flu, the agency said. Avian influenza was detected in Oregon last fall and earlier this year in both domestic animals and wildlife – but not brown pelicans. Additional test results are pending to determine if another disease or domoic acid toxicity caused by harmful algal blooms may be involved, officials said. In recent months, domoic acid toxicity has sickened or killed dozens of brown pelicans and numerous other wildlife in California. The sport harvest for razor clams is currently closed in Oregon – from Cascade Head to the California border – due to high levels of domoic acid detected last fall.Brown pelicans – easily recognized by their large size, massive bill and brownish plumage – breed in Southern California and migrate north along the Oregon coast in spring. Younger birds sometimes rest on the journey and may just be tired, not sick, officials said. If you find a sick, resting or dead pelican, leave it alone and keep dogs leashed and away from wildlife. State wildlife biologists along the coast are aware of the situation and the public doesn’t need to report sick, resting or dead pelicans. — Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.

50-Million-Year-Old Footprints Open a 'Rare Window' Into the Behaviors of Extinct Animals That Once Roamed in Oregon

Scientists revisited tracks made by a shorebird, a lizard, a cat-like predator and some sort of large herbivore at what is now John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

50-Million-Year-Old Footprints Open a ‘Rare Window’ Into the Behaviors of Extinct Animals That Once Roamed in Oregon Scientists revisited tracks made by a shorebird, a lizard, a cat-like predator and some sort of large herbivore at what is now John Day Fossil Beds National Monument Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent April 24, 2025 4:59 p.m. Researchers took a closer look at fossilized footprints—including these cat-like tracks—found at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Oregon. National Park Service Between 29 million and 50 million years ago, Oregon was teeming with life. Shorebirds searched for food in shallow water, lizards dashed along lake beds and saber-toothed predators prowled the landscape. Now, scientists are learning more about these prehistoric creatures by studying their fossilized footprints. They describe some of these tracks, discovered at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, in a paper published earlier this year in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica. John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is a nearly 14,000-acre, federally protected area in central and eastern Oregon. It’s a well-known site for “body fossils,” like teeth and bones. But, more recently, paleontologists have been focusing their attention on “trace fossils”—indirect evidence of animals, like worm burrows, footprints, beak marks and impressions of claws. Both are useful for understanding the extinct creatures that once roamed the environment, though they provide different kinds of information about the past. “Body fossils tell us a lot about the structure of an organism, but a trace fossil … tells us a lot about behaviors,” says lead author Conner Bennett, an Earth and environmental scientist at Utah Tech University, to Crystal Ligori, host of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “All Things Considered.” Oregon's prehistoric shorebirds probed for food the same way modern shorebirds do, according to the researchers. Bennett et al., Palaeontologia Electronica, 2025 For the study, scientists revisited fossilized footprints discovered at the national monument decades ago. Some specimens had sat in museum storage since the 1980s. They analyzed the tracks using a technique known as photogrammetry, which involved taking thousands of photographs to produce 3D models. These models allowed researchers to piece together some long-gone scenes. Small footprints and beak marks were discovered near invertebrate trails, suggesting that ancient shorebirds were pecking around in search of a meal between 39 million and 50 million years ago. This prehistoric behavior is “strikingly similar” to that of today’s shorebirds, according to a statement from the National Park Service. “It’s fascinating,” says Bennett in the statement. “That is an incredibly long time for a species to exhibit the same foraging patterns as its ancestors.” Photogrammetry techniques allowed the researchers to make 3D models of the tracks. Bennett et al., Palaeontologia Electronica, 2025 Researchers also analyzed a footprint with splayed toes and claws. This rare fossil was likely made by a running lizard around 50 million years ago, according to the team. It’s one of the few known reptile tracks in North America from that period. An illustration of a nimravid, an extinct, cat-like predator NPS / Mural by Roger Witter They also found evidence of a cat-like predator dating to roughly 29 million years ago. A set of paw prints, discovered in a layer of volcanic ash, likely belonged to a bobcat-sized, saber-toothed predator resembling a cat—possibly a nimravid of the genus Hoplophoneus. Since researchers didn’t find any claw marks on the paw prints, they suspect the creature had retractable claws, just like modern cats do. A set of three-toed, rounded hoofprints indicate some sort of large herbivore was roaming around 29 million years ago, probably an ancient tapir or rhinoceros ancestor. Together, the fossil tracks open “a rare window into ancient ecosystems,” says study co-author Nicholas Famoso, paleontology program manager at the national monument, in the statement. “They add behavioral context to the body fossils we’ve collected over the years and help us better understand the climate and environmental conditions of prehistoric Oregon,” he adds. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Two teens and 5,000 ants: how a smuggling bust shed new light on a booming trade

Two Belgian 19-year-olds have pleaded guilty to wildlife piracy – part of a growing trend of trafficking ‘less conspicuous’ creatures for sale as exotic petsPoaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country’s iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling operations they typically encounter. There were more than 5,000 smuggled animals, caged in their own enclosures. Each one, however, was about the size of a little fingernail: 18-25mm.The cargo, which two Belgian teenagers had apparently intended to ship to exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia, was ants. Their enclosures were a mixture of test tubes and syringes containing cotton wool – environments that authorities say would keep the insects alive for weeks. Continue reading...

Poaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country’s iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling operations they typically encounter. There were more than 5,000 smuggled animals, caged in their own enclosures. Each one, however, was about the size of a little fingernail: 18-25mm.The samples of garden ants presented to the court. Photograph: Monicah Mwangi/ReutersThe cargo, which two Belgian teenagers had apparently intended to ship to exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia, was ants. Their enclosures were a mixture of test tubes and syringes containing cotton wool – environments that authorities say would keep the insects alive for weeks.“We did not come here to break any laws. By accident and stupidity we did,” says Lornoy David, one of the Belgian smugglers.David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19 years old, pleaded guilty after being charged last week with wildlife piracy, alongside two other men in a separate case who were caught smuggling 400 ants. The cases have shed new light on booming global ant trade – and what authorities say is a growing trend of trafficking “less conspicuous” creatures.These crimes represent “a shift in trafficking trends – from iconic large mammals to lesser-known yet ecologically critical species”, says a KWS statement.The unusual case has also trained a spotlight on the niche world of ant-keeping and collecting – a hobby that has boomed over the past decade. The seized species include Messor cephalotes, a large red harvester ant native to east Africa. Queens of the species grow to about 20-24mm long, and the ant sales website Ants R Us describes them as “many people’s dream species”, selling them for £99 per colony. The ants are prized by collectors for their unique behaviours and complex colony-building skills, “traits that make them popular in exotic pet circles, where they are kept in specialised habitats known as formicariums”, KWS says.Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx during the hearing. Photograph: Monicah Mwangi/ReutersOne online ant vendor, who asked not to be named, says the market is thriving, and there has been a growth in ant-keeping shows, where enthusiasts meet to compare housing and species details. “Sales volumes have grown almost every year. There are more ant vendors than before, and prices have become more competitive,” he says. “In today’s world, where most people live fast-paced, tech-driven lives, many are disconnected from themselves and their environment. Watching ants in a formicarium can be surprisingly therapeutic,” he says.David and Lodewijckx will remain in custody until the court considers a pre-sentencing report on 23 April. The ant seller says theirs is a “landmark case in the field”. “People travelling to other countries specifically to collect ants and then returning with them is virtually unheard of,” he says.A formicarium at a pet shop in Singapore. Photograph: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty ImagesScientists have raised concerns that the burgeoning trade in exotic ants could pose a significant biodiversity risk. “Ants are traded as pets across the globe, but if introduced outside of their native ranges they could become invasive with dire environmental and economic consequences,” researchers conclude in a 2023 paper tracking the ant trade across China. “The most sought-after ants have higher invasive potential,” they write.Removing ants from their ecosystems could also be damaging. Illegal exportation “not only undermines Kenya’s sovereign rights over its biodiversity but also deprives local communities and research institutions of potential ecological and economic benefits”, says KWS. Dino Martins, an entomologist and evolutionary biologist in Kenya, says harvester ants are among the most important insects on the African savannah, and any trade in them is bound to have negative consequences for the ecology of the grasslands.A Kenyan official arranges the containers of ants at the court. Photograph: Kenya Wildlife Service/AP“Harvester ants are seed collectors, and they gather [the seeds] as food for themselves, storing these in their nests. A single large harvester ant colony can collect several kilos of seeds of various grasses a year. In the process of collecting grass seeds, the ants ‘drop’ a number … dispersing them through the grasslands,” says Martins.The insects also serve as food for various other species including aardvarks, pangolins and aardwolves.Martins says he is surprised to see that smugglers feeding the global “pet” trade are training their sights on Kenya, since “ants are among the most common and widespread of insects”.“Insect trade can actually be done more sustainably, through controlled rearing of the insects. This can support livelihoods in rural communities such as the Kipepeo Project which rears butterflies in Kenya,” he says. Locally, the main threats to ants come not from the illegal trade but poisoning from pesticides, habitat destruction and invasive species, says Martins.Philip Muruthi, a vice-president for conservation at the African Wildlife Foundation in Nairobi, says ants enrich soils, enabling germination and providing food for other species.“When you see a healthy forest … you don’t think about what is making it healthy. It is the relationships all the way from the bacteria to the ants to the bigger things,” he says.

Belgian Teenagers Found With 5,000 Ants to Be Sentenced in 2 Weeks

Two Belgian teenagers who were found with thousands of ants valued at $9,200 and allegedly destined for European and Asian markets will be sentenced in two weeks

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Two Belgian teenagers who were found with thousands of ants valued at $9,200 and allegedly destined for European and Asian markets will be sentenced in two weeks, a Kenyan magistrate said Wednesday.Magistrate Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court in Kenya’s main airport, said she would not rush the case but would take time to review environmental impact and psychological reports filed in court before passing sentence on May 7.Belgian nationals Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19 years old, were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house. They were charged on April 15 with violating wildlife conservation laws.The teens have told the magistrate that they didn’t know that keeping the ants was illegal and were just having fun.The Kenya Wildlife Service had said the case represented “a shift in trafficking trends — from iconic large mammals to lesser-known yet ecologically critical species.”Kenya has in the past fought against the trafficking of body parts of larger wild animals such as elephants, rhinos and pangolins among others.The Belgian teens had entered the country on a tourist visa and were staying in a guest house in the western town of Naivasha, popular among tourists for its animal parks and lakes.Their lawyer, Halima Nyakinyua Magairo, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that her clients did not know what they were doing was illegal. She said she hoped the Belgian embassy in Kenya could “support them more in this judicial process.”In a separate but related case, Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a and Vietnamese Duh Hung Nguyen were charged after they were found in possession of 400 ants in their apartment in the capital, Nairobi.KWS had said all four suspects were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia, and that the species included messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large and red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.The ants are bought by people who keep them as pets and observe them in their colonies. Several websites in Europe have listed different species of ants for sale at varied prices.The 5,400 ants found with the four men are valued at 1.2 million Kenyan shillings ($9,200), according to KWS.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

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