Wild Drug Lord Hippos Roam Free in Colombia





I do apologise. I hate click bait, but that headline was irresistible. So:

Colombia, in South America, has its own population of wild hippos, thousands of kilometres from their native  range in Africa. The hippo invasion can be traced straight back to the cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. As reported by DW.com:

"At the height of Escobar's criminal heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, the drug lord built a zoo on his vast Hacienda Napoles ranch between Medellin and Bogota. When he was finally killed by government forces in 1993, the ranch was left to ruin."

"Other exotic species from the private menagerie, such as zebras, were moved to international and Colombian zoos, but zoos were unwilling or unable to give massive, aggressive hippos a home."

"With no one knowing quite what to do with them, the semi-aquatic giants have flourished and multiplied and now number between 65 and 80, according the local environment agency."

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