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The Wild Hippos of Pablo Escobar · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Ben, I'm Noel,
0:28
Speaker 1: and today we are delving into you know, even for us,
0:33
Speaker 1: this is a weird one. Noel, what shows this? This
0:37
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. Sister cool in the right place? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
0:40
Speaker 1: well we have a bumper that plays right, but we
0:43
Speaker 1: don't hear it. That's a little people behind the curtain
0:45
Speaker 1: like that's added in posts. So you know, sometimes I
0:48
Speaker 1: get a little confused as to you know, why are
0:51
Speaker 1: we admired. It's a little early today too, if we're
0:54
Speaker 1: being real, Um, we are talking about some some cool
0:57
Speaker 1: stuff today. But I want to just preface by asking you, Ben,
1:00
Speaker 1: have you ever snuggled a baby hippo. I have not,
1:05
Speaker 1: and I would be hesitant to do so because in
1:09
Speaker 1: their natural environment, hippopotamus will be one of the most
1:14
Speaker 1: dangerous animals on the planet. I think it's the number
1:16
Speaker 1: one most dangerous animal in terms of deaths per year
1:20
Speaker 1: on the African continent. Yeah, and it's because they don't
1:23
Speaker 1: they are they aren't predisposed to kill, but they are
1:27
Speaker 1: intensely territorial and they can charge on land on foot
1:33
Speaker 1: up to eighteen miles per hour, and like you said,
1:36
Speaker 1: they are apparently responsible for more human deaths in Africa
1:39
Speaker 1: than any other um animal, wild animal, that is. Yeah,
1:43
Speaker 1: and especially when they become sexually active, that's when a
1:48
Speaker 1: lot of the you know, possessive, territory oriented behavior begins.
1:54
Speaker 1: But my point really is that the baby hippos are
1:57
Speaker 1: are crazy cute. Oh yeah, they're a little weird like
2:00
Speaker 1: you know, butterball, slime ball, you know, mutant things. And
2:05
Speaker 1: I want one very much. Have you snuggled one? And
2:07
Speaker 1: now I have no I have in my dreams there
2:10
Speaker 1: were some people. There was a couple I believe, who
2:12
Speaker 1: had a They raised hippo from juvenile age and then
2:19
Speaker 1: when it was large, they lived near a river in Africa,
2:23
Speaker 1: and when it was large and full grown, it would
2:25
Speaker 1: still like go to the river and then just come
2:27
Speaker 1: into their house. And it looked very It looked very cute.
2:31
Speaker 1: But the reality of life with a hippo is way
2:36
Speaker 1: different from those graceful ballet dancers you see in Fantasia,
2:40
Speaker 1: a reality apparently lost to a certain drug lord by
2:46
Speaker 1: the name of Pablo Escobar, who thought it would be
2:49
Speaker 1: pretty cool to have a menagerie of exotic creatures. Um
2:55
Speaker 1: things like what what did he have? Oh, he had
2:58
Speaker 1: enough to I believe he began a zoo. Uh, he
3:01
Speaker 1: had hit bos, he had ostriches, he had lots, he
3:05
Speaker 1: had drafts as well. Yeah. Pablo Escobar, of course, is
3:10
Speaker 1: the notorious drug bearing from the nineteen seventies and eighties
3:14
Speaker 1: based in Colombia, and once upon a time he was
3:17
Speaker 1: responsible for the majority of the world's cocaine. Like it's
3:24
Speaker 1: claim to fame right there. And he he got to
3:28
Speaker 1: the point where he was almost like a state power
3:31
Speaker 1: a lot of local people. I thought he was great
3:34
Speaker 1: because he was building infrastructure, provided job security. Uh, he
3:40
Speaker 1: also was behind thousands of bombings and assassinations. And I
3:45
Speaker 1: guess we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the excellent
3:48
Speaker 1: Netflix show Narcos. Yeah, it is pretty pretty solid show.
3:51
Speaker 1: I'm actually not up to date on it, but season
3:53
Speaker 1: one kind of covers up through some of the real
3:58
Speaker 1: manipulative behavior that he would do involving the government and
4:02
Speaker 1: going further even than bribing to literally assassinating government officials
4:06
Speaker 1: that didn't want to play ball with him. And no
4:09
Speaker 1: spoilers in this story, even though it's real life, I
4:12
Speaker 1: don't think you're allowed to consider that spoilers, but it
4:15
Speaker 1: is as a television show involved, so you know how
4:17
Speaker 1: I feel about this. I try to keep my hands
4:19
Speaker 1: clean as far as spoilers are concerned. But we're here
4:22
Speaker 1: to talk about a very specific aspect of the opulent
4:27
Speaker 1: existence of Pablo Escobar Um. Like you said, he was
4:31
Speaker 1: beloved by many who possibly there's a you know, conflagration
4:37
Speaker 1: of love and utter terror and fears. It does seem so,
4:43
Speaker 1: but um, you know, a lot of the poorer people
4:46
Speaker 1: in medean Um revered him almost as a saint. He was.
4:50
Speaker 1: He was referred to as Saint Pablo by many, and there,
4:53
Speaker 1: you know, were these kind of defy deified drawings like
4:57
Speaker 1: you'd see um images of a various saying it's um
5:01
Speaker 1: those kind of images that you see printed on candles
5:04
Speaker 1: that are supposed to cleanse your home and things like that.
5:06
Speaker 1: There are even like these Narco saints that that there
5:10
Speaker 1: are tons of different ones, and he was considered one
5:13
Speaker 1: of them, a living saint, as it were, And it's
5:16
Speaker 1: because he was very benevolent to the people that lived
5:20
Speaker 1: around him in Mediana or in that area. And one
5:23
Speaker 1: of the ways that he bestowed this benevolence upon them
5:27
Speaker 1: was by creating a public zoo that people could just
5:31
Speaker 1: come in roam free. And now Pablo Escobar was shot
5:35
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three, was killed in a gunfight. But
5:39
Speaker 1: before then, especially in the early eighties, was golden age
5:42
Speaker 1: for as Noel said, this living Narco sat in his
5:46
Speaker 1: palatial home, Hacienda Napoles, this halfway between Median and Bogata.
5:51
Speaker 1: The stuff he built would put Michael Jackson and Donald
5:57
Speaker 1: Trump to shame there. I feel like they were living
6:00
Speaker 1: in the poorhouse. Yeah. He built a private bull ring,
6:04
Speaker 1: these gigantic dinosaurs sculptures, which are awesome and they're really
6:09
Speaker 1: weird looking to their very cartoonish and just massive. I
6:12
Speaker 1: think he both them specifically for his kids. And he
6:15
Speaker 1: built an airport. Uh and he had the zoo, public
6:19
Speaker 1: zoo full of smuggled animals, and we name some of
6:23
Speaker 1: those animals. He also, if you're gonna have a decent suit,
6:26
Speaker 1: you gotta have some hippo's, right. He smuggled four hippopotamus is,
6:30
Speaker 1: three females and a male who became known as Viejo
6:37
Speaker 1: the Old One, and he smuggled them from California in
6:41
Speaker 1: the eighties. As you pointed, out. The locals love this.
6:45
Speaker 1: We get a free public zoo. If you were a
6:48
Speaker 1: local person living at the time, the the entire Escobar
6:55
Speaker 1: operation was trying to appear benevolent, unless you were also
6:59
Speaker 1: trying to sell cocaine or attempting to stop them from
7:02
Speaker 1: selling cocaine, or again angered Pablo Escobar in any way.
7:08
Speaker 1: When the Colombian government took over the hacienda in the
7:13
Speaker 1: early nineties, right Escobar's zoo was split up and it
7:18
Speaker 1: was shipped off to other legal zoos, with one notable
7:23
Speaker 1: exception or four notable exceptions, the hippos. Right lest we
7:29
Speaker 1: think that these animal wranglers were lazy or or uninterested,
7:35
Speaker 1: let's consider the problem of the hippopotamus. We're talking about
7:41
Speaker 1: a a four point five tons creature, a four and
7:46
Speaker 1: a half ton creature that can, you know, get an attitude.
7:52
Speaker 1: Hippos are herbivorous, but they are aggressive and the name
7:57
Speaker 1: actually comes from river horse. Have your Have you heard
8:00
Speaker 1: about that? Is it sort of like that movie The
8:03
Speaker 1: water Horse with the the the Locknus monster thing. I
8:08
Speaker 1: haven't seen that. I haven't either, but it's kind of
8:09
Speaker 1: like a hippo. I guess it's is it in the
8:13
Speaker 1: water is but I think it's just a little bit
8:15
Speaker 1: more fully submersible. And it's also a fantasy, uh creature,
8:20
Speaker 1: it's not. You know what, it does remind me of
8:22
Speaker 1: the hipo. Have you guys seen that movie on Netflix? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
8:25
Speaker 1: with the super Pig. It's a Korean film, right, very
8:29
Speaker 1: hippo hippo Poda. I thought the same thing in the animal. Yeah,
8:35
Speaker 1: I think it is a pig, right, genetically based on
8:38
Speaker 1: a pig, and it's it's huge. In real life, the
8:43
Speaker 1: hippo is the third largest land mammal on on Earth.
8:50
Speaker 1: And even though they look like pigs, one thing that's
8:52
Speaker 1: really interesting is there their closest living relatives are cetaceans
8:57
Speaker 1: like whales and dolphins, so they come from a background
9:02
Speaker 1: of of water lovers. Dude, if you if you looked
9:05
Speaker 1: at the inside of one of these creatures mouths, it
9:08
Speaker 1: is like looking into the gaping maw of of hell. Um.
9:12
Speaker 1: It's foul. It's just rotten teeth and weird textured mouth
9:18
Speaker 1: skin and gums and broken Oh my gosh. It's just
9:22
Speaker 1: gives me the creeps. But we digress. Um. So hippos
9:28
Speaker 1: in their natural state, they actually live in a harem,
9:33
Speaker 1: which seems like a loaded term, but it's not because
9:36
Speaker 1: it's sort of got an alpha male. Uh. And then
9:40
Speaker 1: you know a group of females in any offspring associated
9:43
Speaker 1: with it. So if another male, for example, approached you know,
9:48
Speaker 1: any of the females in a harem, there would be
9:51
Speaker 1: hell to pay. There would be some serious charging going on.
9:55
Speaker 1: But after the menagerie was split up and the shipped
10:01
Speaker 1: various and the century parts of the world, the hippopotamus
10:05
Speaker 1: is continue to be an issue because the fence that
10:11
Speaker 1: was meant to, you know, contain these creatures just wasn't
10:15
Speaker 1: nearly sturdy enough. You were saying, I think there were
10:19
Speaker 1: three females, and then we got our old man, the
10:22
Speaker 1: the ajo. The ajo is that right? Um? So you
10:25
Speaker 1: know all they have to do in this environment is
10:28
Speaker 1: basically hang around, um and get busy, you know, make
10:35
Speaker 1: some serious hippo love. And this is pretty cool. It
10:38
Speaker 1: turns out that in their native habitat in Africa, hippos
10:43
Speaker 1: can become sexually active between the ages of seven and
10:47
Speaker 1: nine for males and then nine and eleven for lady.
10:52
Speaker 1: Hippos and uh pablos were becoming sexually active as as
10:58
Speaker 1: young as three years old, because they were just pretty
11:02
Speaker 1: happy they were in this pond. You know, the environment
11:05
Speaker 1: was right for them, the climate was right. They didn't
11:08
Speaker 1: really have any natural predators to be concerned about. They're
11:10
Speaker 1: just chilling in this pond. And so hippo sex was
11:15
Speaker 1: was rampant, and fertile females can give birth to a
11:21
Speaker 1: single calf every year. And this is like a thirty
11:24
Speaker 1: year issue we're talking about here, right, like two thousand seven,
11:28
Speaker 1: I think was when we started really hearing the locals
11:31
Speaker 1: reporting issues with the hippos that we're gonna get into
11:34
Speaker 1: in a minute. But they've been kicking it there since
11:37
Speaker 1: the eighties, right, Yeah, they've been kicking it there since
11:41
Speaker 1: they were imported in the eighties. And there were just
11:43
Speaker 1: four of them. Now there could be as many as
11:46
Speaker 1: an estimated fifty, which makes me wonder about the viability
11:50
Speaker 1: of the the genetic diversity in the population totally. But
11:55
Speaker 1: uh yeah, But with the exception of one hippo named Pepe,
12:01
Speaker 1: who was killed by Colombian soldiers in two thousand nine,
12:06
Speaker 1: with that exception, these hippos are pretty much thriving most
12:10
Speaker 1: of the time. So Pepe would have been son of
12:12
Speaker 1: the old One. Yeah, Pepe would have been son of
12:15
Speaker 1: the Old One, would be a great superlative like Peppe,
12:18
Speaker 1: son of the Old One. I don't know, it sounds
12:21
Speaker 1: like there's a story there. Well, there will be more
12:23
Speaker 1: stories to continue. No. I think he was probably more
12:30
Speaker 1: just pro hippo and pro harem and anti most other
12:34
Speaker 1: things except for water and food. This seems like a
12:38
Speaker 1: hippo attitude. As I was saying, their population is continuing
12:45
Speaker 1: to grow, their thriving, we're talking six percent a year,
12:49
Speaker 1: and with the fact that they are uh maturing in
12:52
Speaker 1: a younger age and reproducing almost said reproducing. That sounds
12:58
Speaker 1: very that says a little BBC. Yeah, they're reproducing at
13:02
Speaker 1: a significantly younger age, and this means that they will
13:11
Speaker 1: inevitably impact to the ecosystem in their native ecosystem. All right,
13:19
Speaker 1: let's just be honest. We're all adults here right. In
13:22
Speaker 1: their native ecosystem, their feces is extremely important to wildlife
13:27
Speaker 1: in the river. Fish and insects love hippo poop. They
13:31
Speaker 1: live off of it. They are in it and of it.
13:34
Speaker 1: It's there, it's their favorite thing. But this means that
13:38
Speaker 1: in this new ecosystem, in Colombia. Scientists are becoming concerned
13:44
Speaker 1: that the rivers will get too clogged with all this
13:48
Speaker 1: hippo poop. Yeah, I was actually I found this uh
13:52
Speaker 1: National Geographic article about the whole ecosystem nightmare that is
13:57
Speaker 1: the Pablo Escobar hippo harem. And it turns out that
14:02
Speaker 1: with this abundance of waste, over abundance of waste in
14:06
Speaker 1: the water, it can cause all kinds of problems, including
14:11
Speaker 1: algae um blooms I guess, and other dangerous micro organisms
14:16
Speaker 1: that can flourish um. So you end up with things
14:19
Speaker 1: like you know, massive fish kills and the like and um,
14:24
Speaker 1: especially when there's higher temperatures and like you said, a
14:28
Speaker 1: lower oxygen levels that can reak all kinds of havoc
14:31
Speaker 1: on an ecosystem. So it's like, you know, hippos aren't
14:35
Speaker 1: native to Colombia, and now we have fifty plus of
14:38
Speaker 1: them running rampant. And there's also the issue of the
14:42
Speaker 1: locals not really appreciating the danger involved in these creatures
14:49
Speaker 1: because they look like, you know, they're huge, but you know,
14:51
Speaker 1: to to the average person, they do kind of look docile.
14:54
Speaker 1: They don't seem like they're angry, they're they're more or
14:56
Speaker 1: less cute, even the big ones. And I think another
14:59
Speaker 1: dangerous thing of about them is that they don't seem
15:03
Speaker 1: like they would charge their deceptively fast over a short distance,
15:08
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And all you have to see,
15:10
Speaker 1: all you have to do is watch it yawn once
15:12
Speaker 1: and you get an idea of the potential. This problem
15:15
Speaker 1: is exacerbated because these days the old Hacienda is a
15:21
Speaker 1: theme park. It's about three hours from it, and it
15:24
Speaker 1: has a water park, a zoo, animal themed attractions. They
15:28
Speaker 1: have events. You know, they're trying to make some lemonade
15:32
Speaker 1: out of lemons historically speaking. But the hippos are still there,
15:39
Speaker 1: their models of hippos, you know, they've got statues. I
15:43
Speaker 1: think the dinosaurs are still there. But they also have,
15:45
Speaker 1: you know, concrete statues of hippos which have become sort
15:48
Speaker 1: of famous locally and in this case internationally. And it
15:53
Speaker 1: brings us to this larger question too. I don't want
15:59
Speaker 1: to derail as too much here, but there are numerous
16:04
Speaker 1: examples of invasive animal populations that have just been left
16:11
Speaker 1: to thrive because the new ecosystem they're in resembles their
16:17
Speaker 1: native ecosystem close enough for government work to the point
16:22
Speaker 1: where they can thrive. Another example would be camels in Australia.
16:27
Speaker 1: Who heard about this, right, there are like three hundred
16:31
Speaker 1: thousand feral camels just walking around Australia. And it's like
16:35
Speaker 1: crazy because you think about feral cats and that seems
16:38
Speaker 1: pretty manageable. But like even in my neighborhood in Atlanta,
16:40
Speaker 1: like we have a feral cat problem, but compared to
16:43
Speaker 1: a feral hippo problem, I would say that is a
16:46
Speaker 1: pretty benign issue. You know, in the worst you're gonna
16:48
Speaker 1: get is they're gonna be like kind of crowding around
16:50
Speaker 1: your feet as you're walking into a gas station or
16:52
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, I can't imagine just being
16:55
Speaker 1: approached by a feral hippo. But like I was saying too,
16:59
Speaker 1: that there's an issue here too, because like the locals
17:01
Speaker 1: in in Median in this area near the resort, I
17:04
Speaker 1: guess let's call it that at this point the theme park,
17:07
Speaker 1: you know, Casa de Escobar, folks don't really have a
17:11
Speaker 1: sense of urgency in like you're seeing these creatures. It's
17:14
Speaker 1: kind of like just sort of an anomaly and sort
17:16
Speaker 1: of an odd like what the heck is that and
17:18
Speaker 1: in fact, in this BBC article on the subject, I
17:22
Speaker 1: read a really interesting account where a child spoke to
17:25
Speaker 1: a local newspaper in Columbia, the l Columbiano, and apparently
17:32
Speaker 1: children near the Hasciana Napolis actually took home a baby
17:39
Speaker 1: hippo cap And here's the quote from BBC. Uh quote.
17:43
Speaker 1: My father brought a little one home once. I called
17:46
Speaker 1: him Luna because he was very sweet. We just fed
17:48
Speaker 1: him milk. And then another child told the paper, my
17:52
Speaker 1: father has captured three. It's nice because you have a
17:55
Speaker 1: little animal at home. We bottle feed them because they
17:58
Speaker 1: only drink milk. They have slipperies in you pour water
18:01
Speaker 1: and they produce a kind of slime. You touch them
18:03
Speaker 1: and it's like soap. Isn't that charming? That is charming
18:08
Speaker 1: yet terrifying, because what happens if one of the bull
18:10
Speaker 1: hippos sees a little school kid making off with their baby?
18:15
Speaker 1: What happens if any kid, any human child, is around
18:19
Speaker 1: an adult hippo. I would eat The risk are there.
18:24
Speaker 1: It's not to quote a deep cut movie, but no,
18:28
Speaker 1: that's a clear and present danger here with the Harrison Ford.
18:33
Speaker 1: I believe so. I believe so if he really bored
18:36
Speaker 1: me when I was a kid. I don't want to
18:37
Speaker 1: bet the farm on it. I mainly remember that it
18:40
Speaker 1: was it was right around that time he was doing
18:42
Speaker 1: all those political thrillers, Like there was that one and
18:44
Speaker 1: then there was the one where he's like, get off
18:45
Speaker 1: my plane where he's like the president was that air
18:48
Speaker 1: Force one was a force? But um, you know, there
18:55
Speaker 1: are some potential solutions being discussed and they ranged for
19:00
Speaker 1: them the yeah, okay, to the ridiculous, and this is
19:03
Speaker 1: ridiculous history. So I guess we better, you know, maybe
19:05
Speaker 1: start with the ridiculous. Should we go you know, backwards
19:08
Speaker 1: ridiculous to more reasonable? Um, let's let's do pros and cons. Yeah,
19:13
Speaker 1: I think that's smart. I think that's smart. So in
19:15
Speaker 1: this BBC article that from the BBC World Service by
19:18
Speaker 1: William Creamer Um, there is an interview with a gentleman
19:22
Speaker 1: named David A Chevalret who is from He's like from
19:26
Speaker 1: a local wildlife official from the area, and um, he
19:30
Speaker 1: offers ideas ranging from building a reserve with you know,
19:35
Speaker 1: proper hippo fences because obviously the original fences did not
19:39
Speaker 1: do the job. Um, but he says it would you
19:42
Speaker 1: know cost an excess of five grand. This is a
19:46
Speaker 1: pretty poor area. That's not chump change. It's kind of
19:49
Speaker 1: a big deal to deal with the remnants of the
19:53
Speaker 1: opulent Escobars. Bizarre, you know, pretty selfish if we're being honest, lifestyle,
20:00
Speaker 1: you know, not really thinking ahead here, Mr Escobar. So
20:03
Speaker 1: pro it removes it removes this hippo population from the
20:09
Speaker 1: local human population. Con it's expensive, and I get the
20:13
Speaker 1: feeling that's just the entry price, not counting maintenance. Cohn
20:17
Speaker 1: again in and since these hippos are already very well
20:23
Speaker 1: known in the local and global arena, there would also
20:27
Speaker 1: have to be paid dedicated staff to prevent people from
20:32
Speaker 1: messing with the hippos. It's not a perfect thing. It's
20:36
Speaker 1: not not a perfect proposal, but it's a you got
20:41
Speaker 1: to do something right. The one of the things that's
20:44
Speaker 1: not an option is doing nothing. They're aggressive, the territorial
20:48
Speaker 1: they're breeding. I know there's you know another possibility where
20:53
Speaker 1: we say, well, we have environmentalists working at the scene,
20:59
Speaker 1: their charities were concerned. Why can they not simply transport
21:03
Speaker 1: the hippos right to their giant It's hard, it's very expensive,
21:08
Speaker 1: so costly, and we don't know how many there even are, right, Like,
21:12
Speaker 1: there's like there's you know what, if they miss a
21:14
Speaker 1: single male, then it's like game over. It's like, you know,
21:17
Speaker 1: might as well, it's like starting over again. Might not
21:20
Speaker 1: happen overnight, obviously, but before you know it, you're gonna
21:22
Speaker 1: be back up to your your ears and hippos. And
21:26
Speaker 1: even if we could, even if someone took upon themselves
21:30
Speaker 1: the cost of transporting these massive animals to a a
21:34
Speaker 1: native region, right, what they're going to find is that
21:38
Speaker 1: there's a there's a very real likelihood that they could
21:41
Speaker 1: transmit unfamiliar diseases to native hippos and then boom, we've
21:47
Speaker 1: lost all of the hippos. Possibly that's not probable, but
21:51
Speaker 1: it's possible. It's a very real concern. I know, I
21:53
Speaker 1: promised to go from ridiculous to sensible, and I think
21:56
Speaker 1: I I did not deliver on that. I think I
21:58
Speaker 1: started with sensible. So let's let's do the opposite extreme. Um,
22:02
Speaker 1: since since we we promised some ridiculousness. Um uh, since
22:07
Speaker 1: you did? I did. You're right, You're right. I can
22:10
Speaker 1: only speak for myself here. Another local wildlife authority suggested, Um,
22:15
Speaker 1: you know, let's just kill them all. In barbecue them
22:18
Speaker 1: and a feast on their flesh. That is that is
22:20
Speaker 1: the quote. I think they should barbecue them and eat them,
22:24
Speaker 1: says Patricio von Hildebrand, right. And apparently this came from
22:29
Speaker 1: a situation where one of the hippo's was accidentally electrocuted
22:35
Speaker 1: to death on a um poorly calibrated electric fence, shall
22:40
Speaker 1: we say, And the locals came around, chopped up the
22:45
Speaker 1: carcass and barbecue them. And apparently, um hippo tastes a
22:49
Speaker 1: lot like pork, which makes sense considering their uh, pig
22:53
Speaker 1: like appearance. Yeah, I would, personally, I would be hesitant
22:56
Speaker 1: to eat it. And this is this is something that
22:59
Speaker 1: comes up. Another biologist had said that this meat, regardless
23:05
Speaker 1: of how you prepare it, may again have some sort
23:08
Speaker 1: of unexpected disease, right, possibly something that could cause meningitis.
23:13
Speaker 1: But there's another solution, or another proposed solution, and that's
23:17
Speaker 1: the idea that we just get rid of all the males,
23:21
Speaker 1: you know, like like Herod in the Bible. What we
23:24
Speaker 1: were saying earlier, though, that's tricky because you know what
23:28
Speaker 1: if one of them holds up somewhere they're on the lamb,
23:31
Speaker 1: and uh, you know we miss one and then you
23:34
Speaker 1: know it was a wasted effort, right, like you said,
23:37
Speaker 1: square one or back to back to hippo zero zero.
23:43
Speaker 1: And then there's the you know, the castration idea, which is,
23:47
Speaker 1: you know, a little squeaky, but let's go into it. Okay. Sure,
23:50
Speaker 1: So if we want to be humane, right then instead
23:56
Speaker 1: of eliminating this breedy possibility by eliminating all the males,
24:03
Speaker 1: we have kicked around the idea we as a species,
24:06
Speaker 1: not just me, and yeah, that's just us. So we're
24:08
Speaker 1: gonna handle the hippo problem, right add On, that's the
24:12
Speaker 1: first thing you said to me this morning, right, Ben,
24:14
Speaker 1: It's time to handle the hippo problem. You and I
24:15
Speaker 1: are actually leaving after recording this to go to Columbia
24:19
Speaker 1: for something different, but I think we'll we'll do the
24:21
Speaker 1: hippo thing on the way. The problem is that hippo's,
24:25
Speaker 1: aside from being big, aside from being aggressive, there's a
24:29
Speaker 1: real danger if we try to conduct that kind of
24:32
Speaker 1: neutering operation on them, right, we don't know when they'll
24:37
Speaker 1: get back up. Yeah, because hippo's, as it turns out,
24:40
Speaker 1: despite their massive stature, are pretty dainty and delicate when
24:46
Speaker 1: it comes to chemicals, and in order to perform these procedures,
24:52
Speaker 1: these creatures would have to be anesthetized and it could
24:55
Speaker 1: potentially kill them, right, and this would end up, you
25:01
Speaker 1: know that this would be a situation where with the
25:04
Speaker 1: best of intentions, they just ended up killing all the
25:08
Speaker 1: male hippos. The other problem here is that regionally a
25:14
Speaker 1: lot of the locals have kind of taken this on.
25:16
Speaker 1: Is a local mascot. I think they're proud of, you know.
25:20
Speaker 1: And there was one hippo that was castrated, that was
25:26
Speaker 1: successfully castrated, and people hated it. They were saying, oh,
25:30
Speaker 1: why do you have to castrate this hippo? Just Steve. Yeah,
25:34
Speaker 1: let Steve be castrate the politicians. That was the idea.
25:37
Speaker 1: That's a really good bumper sticker. Lets Steve or castrate
25:41
Speaker 1: politicians like in the whole split them up. Now me
25:44
Speaker 1: two different ones, okay, because you know, depending on the car,
25:47
Speaker 1: we gotta know where the stickers stickers. It's got a
25:50
Speaker 1: new car today. By the way, no bumper stickers shall
25:52
Speaker 1: graze this vehicle. Bumper sticker. Let us know how you
25:57
Speaker 1: feel about bumper stickers. And as we end the episode today,
26:02
Speaker 1: it's true the hippos are still out there and also
26:06
Speaker 1: Ferrell camels in Australia. But there is a ray of
26:10
Speaker 1: sunshine in the story, has a handful of rays. It's
26:12
Speaker 1: pretty interesting story. Um. Nobody has been hurt or killed
26:16
Speaker 1: by any of these hippos to date that we have
26:20
Speaker 1: discovered and looking into this, so you know, maybe uh.
26:24
Speaker 1: I think the biggest concern is probably the danger to
26:27
Speaker 1: the ecosystem and you know, potentially a little kid getting
26:31
Speaker 1: squashed because you know, he or she is trying to
26:34
Speaker 1: take home a cute, cute, sweet, slippery, soapy baby hippo
26:39
Speaker 1: calf uh. The World Wildlife Foundation does call the situation
26:44
Speaker 1: a ticking time bomb because depending on their rate of reproduction,
26:50
Speaker 1: if there is nothing done, then eventually, yes, it will
26:55
Speaker 1: turn violent and innocent humans could could be harmed or killed. However,
27:02
Speaker 1: there is an opportunity. I think there is an opportunity
27:06
Speaker 1: to create some rays of sunshine from this. As you said,
27:09
Speaker 1: you know what if there were a safe place right
27:12
Speaker 1: where the hippo's will be guarded, allowed to live their
27:16
Speaker 1: hippo lives hip behaven, I do. Let's let's have a
27:21
Speaker 1: place like that where people can observe them from a
27:25
Speaker 1: distance and help support you know, the associated cost, and
27:30
Speaker 1: not accidentally find one in a river. You know, it's
27:33
Speaker 1: it's sort of It reminds me of the idea of
27:36
Speaker 1: the old question of what's the scariest thing to see
27:39
Speaker 1: in the woods if you're camping sasquatch if you can
27:43
Speaker 1: find one? Right the World Champions of Hide and Seek,
27:46
Speaker 1: there's one of the answers is a bear cub because
27:52
Speaker 1: the mother is somewhere totally and you don't know where.
27:55
Speaker 1: Or sasquatchub or a sasquatch, a sasquab, sasquab. It's tough
28:00
Speaker 1: to say, but it's worth it. It's a lot of fun. Um. Well,
28:04
Speaker 1: I think yeah. Is that that? That does it for
28:06
Speaker 1: Escobar and his his his hippo hare. Um. Yes, thus
28:12
Speaker 1: ends our episode on Pablo Escobar's hippo Haven. That's better, Well,
28:19
Speaker 1: the haven is coming, Yeah, hopefully the hippo Haven is
28:24
Speaker 1: on the way. This does, not, however, end our show.
28:29
Speaker 1: We'll be back very soon with something bizarre, something weird.
28:34
Speaker 1: Something dare I say ridiculous, You don't have to. Well,
28:40
Speaker 1: it's it's out there now. In the meantime, we'd love
28:43
Speaker 1: to hear from you have you visited Colombia? Have you,
28:48
Speaker 1: by any chance happened to see the hacienda yourself? And
28:53
Speaker 1: also what was the one we asked earlier? What do
28:56
Speaker 1: you think of bumper stickers? That's the burning question really
28:59
Speaker 1: that we were left it today, that's my take away anyway.
29:02
Speaker 1: But um, you can do all that stuff if you want.
29:04
Speaker 1: You can email us at what are we Ridiculous at,
29:07
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. That's us, and you can
29:10
Speaker 1: find us at all the other various social media's. I
29:13
Speaker 1: think in an earlier episode, if I recall correctly, we're
29:17
Speaker 1: still speculating on a Pinterest. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not.
29:20
Speaker 1: I'm not about that Pinterest life. Well, we'll put a
29:23
Speaker 1: pin in that for now. I know they're not all
29:27
Speaker 1: going to be great. They're not all giving you home runs,
29:29
Speaker 1: so right as send us her thoughts, your dreams, your nightmares,
29:32
Speaker 1: and you know, if you have an idea for an episode,
29:34
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear that too, and we'll catch you
29:37
Speaker 1: next time on Ridiculous History