The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 24, 2024


Christmas Pre-Record ｜ Colombia's Cocaine Hippo Problem


Episode Stats

Length

25 minutes

Words per Minute

171.74077

Word Count

4,338

Sentence Count

379


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.460 Merry Christmas Eve, folks. I thought we'd talk about cocaine hippos.
00:00:04.840 Because nothing says Christmas Eve like cocaine hippos.
00:00:08.080 Well, look, to you and me, that seems like a strange, you know, a way out position to have.
00:00:15.320 But if you lived in Colombia, where I'm sure they do celebrate Christmas,
00:00:19.040 you'd be like, yeah, no, the hippos are a real problem.
00:00:21.520 I actually put a cocaine hippo at the top of my Christmas list this year.
00:00:24.400 So if I'm lucky, I'll find one in my stocking.
00:00:27.460 So this is the hippopotamus, right?
00:00:31.080 I don't know what the scientific designation for it is.
00:00:34.300 I'm sure it's on here somewhere, but it doesn't matter.
00:00:36.180 It's hippopotamus amphibious, I think it was.
00:00:39.720 You know what, that's also rather ironic, considering they can't swim.
00:00:44.180 They're not really amphibious, they just stand in water.
00:00:47.060 I thought they sort of milled about and they like to wallow in the water.
00:00:50.800 Oh yeah, they do, they spend all day in water.
00:00:52.720 But I'm not sure I'd call them amphibious.
00:00:55.120 So it kind of implies that they can swim and live in the water.
00:00:58.900 Something that blew my mind is, I was watching a nature documentary,
00:01:02.360 and apparently when they get attacked in the water,
00:01:04.760 they release their bowels and then use their tail like a propeller
00:01:09.320 to spread it as far as possible.
00:01:11.400 That is a very horrible adaptation.
00:01:14.760 That is apparently true.
00:01:15.760 But they're one of the only two hippopotami left in the world.
00:01:22.000 The other one is the pygmy hippo.
00:01:23.740 And that's probably for the best, because hippopotamuses are dangerous and psychotic.
00:01:28.420 And they look quite cute and cuddly, but look at all the scars on this.
00:01:31.840 I was just looking at it thinking, that's not something I want to mess with.
00:01:35.180 Yeah, this lad has been through the wars, right?
00:01:39.200 And hippopotamuses are the third largest land animal in the world,
00:01:43.300 behind elephants and rhinoceroses.
00:01:45.100 They can get up to about three tons, which is just gargantuan.
00:01:49.720 And their range, their natural range is, of course, all across Africa.
00:01:53.040 Although, historically, they used to be across Europe and Asia as well.
00:01:57.560 So if you went back, like, 20,000 years to sort of the Middle East or wherever,
00:02:01.380 you'd find hippopotamuses in the river there, which is interesting.
00:02:04.800 So in the Ice Age, so were they hairy?
00:02:08.740 No, they're just in hot areas.
00:02:10.880 Oh, okay, that makes sense.
00:02:12.040 But they weren't in, like, Northern Europe or anything.
00:02:14.300 I was going to say, the Scandinavian hippo is a strange concept.
00:02:18.900 No, no, but they are absolutely gargantuan beasts,
00:02:22.840 and they have a massive skull.
00:02:24.580 And this massive skull, that picture would come up.
00:02:30.240 This massive skull, there was a...
00:02:32.620 There it is.
00:02:33.280 There we go.
00:02:34.220 As you can see, it's got gargantuan teeth in it.
00:02:37.320 Have you seen people try and, like, recreate what a hippo could look like
00:02:42.300 based on its skull?
00:02:43.360 Yeah, it looks like a dragon.
00:02:44.520 It looks horrifying.
00:02:45.800 Like, they make it look like a monster.
00:02:47.480 Yeah, because they can't remodel the sort of soft tissue
00:02:52.240 that hides all the teeth.
00:02:54.740 And this is why every dinosaur recreation you see is probably wrong.
00:02:59.220 It's probably unlikely that, like, Tyrannosaurus Rex had teeth sticking out of his mouth.
00:03:03.360 The chances are it just had a really thick, meaty hippo mouth rather than, like...
00:03:09.440 Because normally, a Tyrannosaurus Rex recreation, like, it looks kind of like oblong-shaped jaw
00:03:13.900 because it's a big, thick jaw, and then it's got teeth sticking out.
00:03:16.620 Well, no.
00:03:17.120 Imagine there's big, fleshy lumps hiding the teeth, and that's probably more likely.
00:03:21.640 And the thing is, modern recreations and paleo art of this do it
00:03:26.020 and like to make the Tyrannosaurus Rex look more like a monitor lizard
00:03:29.200 because they have their teeth covered.
00:03:31.480 And the thing is, it looks kind of stupid and gummy.
00:03:34.740 I could imagine it being kind of more scary.
00:03:37.680 Imagine being chased by something that looks kind of gormless and kind of clueless.
00:03:42.620 It looks harmless, that's the thing, because you can't see the teeth.
00:03:45.960 It looks far less dangerous.
00:03:47.200 But I was thinking about this, that if you sort of made a chicken about six or seven foot tall,
00:03:53.820 the fact that it has no intelligence makes it sort of scarier in a weird way.
00:03:58.520 Yeah, but the thing is, I think they do have a kind of intelligence, that's the thing.
00:04:02.680 It's not like...
00:04:03.760 I mean, look at the corvus, the ravens and the crows.
00:04:07.100 They're really smart.
00:04:08.500 They've got the intelligence of a seven-year-old child.
00:04:10.840 They can do puzzles and all sorts of things.
00:04:14.700 They can pass information down generations.
00:04:17.920 All sorts of really impressive things.
00:04:19.400 The ones where they use tools to solve puzzles to get the food out of the tube or whatever,
00:04:25.200 that's genuinely worrying because what you realise, what you're dealing with,
00:04:28.820 is non-human reasoning.
00:04:30.940 And that means...
00:04:32.260 I mean, if there's one thing...
00:04:34.500 Now, bird lovers will say,
00:04:35.740 well, hang on a second, I've got a pet parrot and he's really affectionate.
00:04:37.840 It's like, yeah, yeah, he is.
00:04:40.940 But I also feel that the bird has a kind of inhuman quality to it that's more reptilian.
00:04:48.120 And like...
00:04:48.660 That's fair, yeah.
00:04:49.500 There's something about a non-human intelligence where it's just like...
00:04:53.880 It's cruel and calculating in the way I view them.
00:04:57.360 Well, they also have very small brains and, you know, bird brains, notorious as an insult,
00:05:04.320 as well as the fact that they're not usually very wrinkly and...
00:05:07.960 Like a koala.
00:05:09.920 Anyway, the point being, these massive beasts are the most dangerous animals in Africa.
00:05:16.860 They kill more people than any other animal.
00:05:19.480 So everyone's like, oh God, I'm really worried about lions and leopards and elephants.
00:05:22.220 No, it's the hippo that is the problem.
00:05:26.140 And so releasing a load of hippos into the wild in another country is a problem.
00:05:31.240 Because in Africa, they have droughts.
00:05:33.960 And droughts mean mass die-offs.
00:05:36.500 And then, therefore, the population of hippos who don't really have any natural predators.
00:05:40.680 I mean, technically, like a pride of lions might be able to bring down a hippo.
00:05:45.760 Possibly.
00:05:46.240 But for most of the hippos' existence, it doesn't really have to worry about predators.
00:05:51.560 Because it's just too big.
00:05:52.960 And so the thing that keeps the hippo numbers under control is Africa's atrocious weather system.
00:06:00.140 So anyway, let's talk about Pablo Escobar.
00:06:04.980 I love being able to tie these things together.
00:06:08.400 So I don't really know that much about Pablo Escobar.
00:06:11.240 I had to have a read of his Wikipedia page.
00:06:13.300 And there are loads of documentaries and things like that.
00:06:16.060 But he seemed like a kind of cheery maniac.
00:06:19.440 As you can see by the photo, he looks like he's probably a fun guy to go out for a beer with, right?
00:06:25.720 Might not be beer, but...
00:06:27.140 Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:28.020 Might not be beer.
00:06:29.520 So for anyone who doesn't know, any Zoomers watching,
00:06:32.680 Pablo Escobar was considered to be the wealthiest criminal in history.
00:06:35.960 Because he ran what in modern-day dollars was a $70 billion cocaine trade out of Colombia.
00:06:45.260 He had monopolized...
00:06:45.900 With his gang, he had monopolized the entire cocaine...
00:06:51.280 International cocaine...
00:06:53.960 Industry.
00:06:55.220 Yeah, industry, I guess you'd call it.
00:06:57.080 To the United States.
00:06:59.260 So all cocaine in America through the 70s and 80s.
00:07:03.740 By the late 80s, anyway.
00:07:05.580 Yeah.
00:07:05.960 Sorry, the mid-80s.
00:07:07.580 Was coming through Pablo Escobar's networks.
00:07:11.980 So he was unbelievably rich.
00:07:15.060 Forbes, for seven consecutive years, marked him as one of the richest people in the world.
00:07:21.080 And he...
00:07:22.160 I mean, he was just mad.
00:07:23.420 Absolutely mad.
00:07:25.660 He created, though...
00:07:27.520 He made himself a giant luxury house.
00:07:30.580 And in this giant luxury house, he had a zoo.
00:07:33.240 And in this zoo, he had more than 200 species of exotic animals, such as hippos, giraffes, elephants, zebras, and ostriches.
00:07:40.440 All introduced to the country as a result of bribes to the government.
00:07:44.300 He couldn't even have a zoo without corruption.
00:07:48.860 Yeah, well, I mean, yeah.
00:07:51.380 I guess.
00:07:52.180 I mean, if that is your job, then...
00:07:55.860 You know, the story of him essentially declaring war on the Colombian government, killing hundreds and hundreds of police officers, government officials, and...
00:08:06.820 I mean, essentially trying to set himself up as, like, a little, like, cocaine monarch in Colombia is genuinely fascinating.
00:08:15.160 He is a terrible guy, just to be clear.
00:08:19.060 Terrible guy, libertarian hero.
00:08:22.760 No, he's genuinely an evil guy.
00:08:25.060 Killed hundreds of people.
00:08:27.640 But a strange and entertaining life to read about, right?
00:08:31.200 But anyway, so he died aged 44 in 1993.
00:08:36.620 Killed by the government.
00:08:38.440 Of course he was.
00:08:39.480 Yeah.
00:08:40.000 They want to crush an innocent entrepreneur, don't they?
00:08:43.540 Yeah, they just want to keep the little guy down.
00:08:46.260 Yet another victim of state violence.
00:08:48.940 Anyway, so he had a bunch of hippos.
00:08:52.220 And they escaped from his zoo.
00:08:54.940 And they got hunted down.
00:08:58.220 One of these hippos was called Pepe.
00:09:00.980 Which is weirdly mimetic.
00:09:03.060 And the Colombian government, not satisfied with killing just a prosperous entrepreneur, they were also hunting down his hippos.
00:09:12.100 And Pepe got shot, as you can see, by the number of army men, soldiers, around the hippo as they shot him.
00:09:20.640 He died a hero.
00:09:21.640 Look at how many men it took to take him down.
00:09:23.440 Yeah, well, I mean, it's a goddamn hippo, so yeah.
00:09:26.240 They were also searching for a bunch of other hippos, which were escaped.
00:09:32.100 Because Pablo had three females and one male.
00:09:35.560 I can see where this is going.
00:09:36.800 You can see where this is going.
00:09:38.800 They'd been living in a tropical valley after escaping almost three years prior to 2009 from Escobar's property, which was seized by the government, by the way.
00:09:49.860 So they killed him, took his stuff, and it's just like, look, man, that's a story for the eight.
00:09:54.180 Anyway, I'm just joking.
00:09:56.320 Obviously, we don't support Pablo Escobar here.
00:09:59.040 But they were part of his collection, and the authorities ordered that the hippos be hunted down and killed because they were damaging crops and endangering people.
00:10:08.460 They did spend, I think it was about two years, trying to capture them to geld the hippos.
00:10:13.660 So, okay, we're not going to kill them.
00:10:15.880 We're just going to, you know, neuter them so they're not breeding and taking over Colombia.
00:10:21.640 The problem is that's a lot easier said than done.
00:10:25.380 Yeah, how do you catch a hippo?
00:10:27.040 Yeah, that's the question, right?
00:10:28.960 How do you catch, sedate, and then castrate a hippo?
00:10:32.620 So the answer is not very easily, which is why it took them two years.
00:10:36.400 And this is why the government was just like, look, just shoot them.
00:10:39.520 Just shoot them for God's sake.
00:10:41.460 You know, do we actually need to have all these hippos running around?
00:10:45.480 But they were also searching for a couple of females and some calves that they had given birth to.
00:10:54.060 Now, the problem with this is that people didn't like seeing this picture, right?
00:11:02.940 I mean, it's an invasive species.
00:11:05.540 And also, I've just looked it up.
00:11:07.280 Apparently, hippos are good eating.
00:11:09.540 Oh, I'm sure they're delicious.
00:11:11.260 Apparently, it's very fatty, though, as you can probably imagine.
00:11:13.760 I don't mind that.
00:11:14.620 No, it's fine.
00:11:15.320 Yeah, but the point is, people, presumably bourgeois liberals.
00:11:22.460 I knew that was coming.
00:11:25.420 We're like, oh, look at the poor hippo.
00:11:28.560 Look at these mean men with their guns.
00:11:31.180 They killed the hippo.
00:11:33.100 And so now, people were like, oh, the public was outraged at the pictures of 15 uniformed
00:11:38.760 men standing beside Pepe the hippo's body.
00:11:41.420 The most vocal protesters demanded that the Minister of the Environment resign.
00:11:45.640 Newspapers ran angry letters from readers.
00:11:48.120 An outcry soon led a judge to prohibit further hippo killings.
00:11:52.840 Escobar sympathises.
00:11:54.280 Just because they're killing his inner circle doesn't mean, you know, it's not justified.
00:11:59.020 So, you can see where this is going, right?
00:12:02.240 Colombia is a country that's near to the equator.
00:12:05.760 And so it's very, very warm all year round.
00:12:09.060 However, unlike Africa, Colombia is drenched in water.
00:12:14.620 Absolutely drenched.
00:12:15.660 It's really, really high rainfall.
00:12:18.240 And so, basically, this is like hippo utopia.
00:12:22.920 It's got, you know, it's a tremendous number of bodies of water.
00:12:27.620 It's gorgeous and warm.
00:12:29.100 It's lush and verdant.
00:12:30.700 There is food everywhere.
00:12:33.760 This has become, if you wanted to battery farm hippos and increase a hippo population as
00:12:40.560 quickly as possible, you would do it in somewhere like Colombia, in fact.
00:12:44.500 Because it has absolutely everything the hippos need.
00:12:46.760 No natural predators.
00:12:48.180 It has no shortage of food.
00:12:49.820 No problems with the environment.
00:12:51.620 And lots and lots of space.
00:12:53.120 Because there are no other hippos around.
00:12:54.820 Are the hippos stupid?
00:12:55.720 What are they doing living in Africa?
00:12:57.120 Why didn't they move?
00:12:58.060 Well, that's a great question.
00:12:59.460 And, you know, they...
00:13:00.700 I imagine that, you know, when the continental plates of Africa and South America split,
00:13:05.340 the hippos were like, well, surely the African one's going to be better, you know.
00:13:08.820 But, no, the mistake was made.
00:13:10.260 They should have been on the South American one.
00:13:12.740 But, anyway, yeah.
00:13:13.760 So, a judge intervened and was like, you're not allowed to kill these hippos.
00:13:17.380 That's inhuman.
00:13:18.640 Look at it.
00:13:19.220 They're not human.
00:13:20.380 Well, yeah.
00:13:20.800 Hippos.
00:13:21.920 And, at the time, Pepe was one of around what they estimated to be 60 wild hippos in
00:13:27.640 the Hacienda, Nepalese ranch.
00:13:30.920 Um, but the thing is, because there's just nothing stopping the hippos from going anywhere,
00:13:38.100 uh, hippos have been sighted, like, hundreds of miles away at the Laskovar ranch.
00:13:44.100 And they're like, oh, like, down these rivers?
00:13:46.140 Because there's literally no reason that the hippo can't just...
00:13:48.920 Like, there's nothing to hunt the hippo.
00:13:51.080 Like, I mean, you know, there's not that much in Africa to hunt the hippo either.
00:13:54.380 But there are at least, you know, massive crocodiles, like Nile crocodiles and saltwater crocodiles.
00:13:59.340 But if you've got, like, caiman, which aren't very big, and they aren't very, you know,
00:14:03.240 aren't that dangerous, to a hippo, like, hippo's like, look, I kill saltwater crocodiles
00:14:07.500 with my face.
00:14:08.680 You know, you're, you're like, you're, you're tiny, thin jaws.
00:14:11.620 You're not going to do anything.
00:14:12.820 I think I have a solution here.
00:14:15.120 Americans.
00:14:16.120 You know how many Americans like going on hunting holidays?
00:14:19.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:14:20.440 They can sort of, uh, become Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator and go through the jungle.
00:14:25.620 Yeah, hunting hippos.
00:14:26.800 That's, that's quite a story to tell.
00:14:28.480 If someone said they'd been to Columbia hunting hippos, I'd be like, I respect you.
00:14:31.840 I mean, it's literally the most dangerous game.
00:14:33.960 Exactly.
00:14:34.640 It's, you know, anyway.
00:14:36.400 Uh, but the, the, the problem, of course, is that leftists are outraged.
00:14:42.780 Um, and so they, they point out, Michael Knight, a South African ecologist, points out that,
00:14:49.340 look, this, this is genuinely hippo paradise, right?
00:14:51.960 You couldn't craft a more wonderful place for the hippos to live.
00:14:55.500 And so, this has been a real problem.
00:14:58.620 Now, Pepe the hippo got his own little documentary.
00:15:01.680 He was quite famous.
00:15:03.520 Uh, even looks a bit like Pepe the frog there as well.
00:15:06.180 That's weird.
00:15:06.780 A little bit.
00:15:07.280 Um, but, uh, anyway, so this, it was a kind of first person documentary from Pepe the hippo.
00:15:14.420 What, it was from the hippo's perspective?
00:15:16.580 Yeah.
00:15:18.340 Yeah.
00:15:19.380 Uh, weird.
00:15:20.580 I don't really know why.
00:15:22.320 I haven't watched it.
00:15:23.360 I have to be honest.
00:15:24.640 But yeah, look, you said, you know, Nelson gives the ill-fated creature its own voice.
00:15:29.260 I don't know why you'd do a first person documentary.
00:15:31.140 That's a bit weird.
00:15:32.740 I hate it when people give voices to animals.
00:15:35.300 It feels really...
00:15:36.580 Well, like in the Bible.
00:15:38.000 Yeah.
00:15:38.300 Well, I meant more in film, but...
00:15:41.620 I think it's weird in the Bible, too.
00:15:43.520 Oh, this donkey started talking.
00:15:44.720 Did it, though?
00:15:46.100 Anyway.
00:15:46.980 Um...
00:15:47.620 But anyway, so, uh, this, this was a famous hippo.
00:15:52.500 Now, it's a famous and beloved hippo.
00:15:55.080 But anyway, researchers have been like, yeah, so just how many hippos are there in Colombia?
00:15:58.820 And the answer is they don't know, but more than they thought.
00:16:01.880 Uh-oh.
00:16:02.780 So, uh, a few years ago, researchers, uh, were, like, curious about how fast the animals were reproducing.
00:16:08.900 And they thought, oh, there's probably about 98 of them in the, uh, Magdalena River.
00:16:14.420 And it's tributaries in 2020.
00:16:17.160 Now, that's, that's quite a large number of hippos, really.
00:16:20.080 Um, but, you know, okay, well, that's not that bad.
00:16:23.680 Uh, but they did a new study, counting the animals in person, using drones, other tracking methods.
00:16:28.320 And they're like, yeah, there's over 200 of them, actually.
00:16:31.520 And so, you've got this kind of exponential breeding curve.
00:16:36.400 So, I imagine he probably got them in the 80s, right?
00:16:39.000 Yeah, probably.
00:16:40.200 He got killed...
00:16:41.620 1993.
00:16:42.660 1993, okay.
00:16:44.300 So, that's not that long for, for, for hippos to become 200.
00:16:51.320 That's quite a lot of hippos.
00:16:53.800 Well, again, in other environments, it might not, they might not have bred quite so quickly.
00:16:59.340 But if you literally put them in hippo paradise, and say, right, here's literally all the resources
00:17:04.320 you'll ever need, and all the safety and comfort you'll ever want, then it turns out they can
00:17:08.920 breed really rapidly.
00:17:10.260 So, they're going to have their very own version of the mouse utopia experiment, but with hippos,
00:17:14.740 where...
00:17:15.540 Hippos in Colombia, yeah.
00:17:17.100 And, ironically, that's exactly what's happening.
00:17:21.040 And the thing is, there are no native animals in Colombia that are nearly as big as a hippo.
00:17:25.200 Like, I don't know, like, capybara or whatever they have.
00:17:27.720 You know, they're big, obviously, you know, for an animal, but, like, they're not three tons.
00:17:33.060 And so, the hippos are just crowding out everything.
00:17:36.720 And so, it becomes apparent that the hippos are going to become a threat to the local wildlife.
00:17:41.380 I'm not surprised.
00:17:42.380 Yeah, and they're going to literally take over the country.
00:17:46.080 All of the waterways in the country are going to become essentially unnavigable if the hippos
00:17:49.860 have their way.
00:17:50.960 And so, the government is actually going to have to start culling them.
00:17:53.380 So, this is like Escobar's final spiteful action, is unleashing hippos on the population,
00:17:59.080 like a biblical plague upon the government that killed him.
00:18:04.400 Yeah, because...
00:18:05.020 Well, actually, it was the US government, but still.
00:18:07.000 Sure, but the point...
00:18:08.660 I mean, he was at war with the Colombian government.
00:18:10.300 So, yeah, this is a kind of vengeance from beyond the grave.
00:18:13.100 But, yeah, no, they point out they're all descendants of the three females and one male,
00:18:17.140 legally imported.
00:18:18.460 And the people doing the study say that the state must act urgently because this is a real
00:18:24.200 issue.
00:18:24.860 Because, I mean, they are actually going to drive native species into extinction and probably
00:18:29.660 kill a lot of people.
00:18:31.340 Because, of course, you know, Colombia, not exactly a developed nation.
00:18:34.480 There are lots of people who, like, you know, use their rivers in the traditional way that
00:18:38.700 ancestors always have, you know, on, like, reed mats or something, you know, pushing themselves
00:18:42.540 down the river to fish or whatever it is.
00:18:44.740 Like, if you...
00:18:45.480 You know, a hippo can destroy a boat, like a large boat that, you know...
00:18:48.800 You've seen videos from Africa where there are people in, like, a motorboat going quite
00:18:53.420 quickly and you just see this thing under the surface.
00:18:56.660 It's like, that's horrifying.
00:18:58.140 Yeah.
00:18:58.240 I'd be, you know, beside myself with fear if just this mass under the water starts coming
00:19:05.820 towards my boat.
00:19:06.740 I think it's literally thousands of people a year in capsized boats that hippos destroy.
00:19:12.060 And so you imagine there's some guy on some, you know, reed boat just casually.
00:19:17.160 It's like, I've never seen a hippo.
00:19:19.880 Could you imagine if they start, you know, they go into the Amazon and they go to these
00:19:23.780 uncontacted tribes and then these creatures just come at them.
00:19:27.260 They're going to think that there's some sort of demonic...
00:19:29.580 Would they be wrong to think of them as, like, some sort of dragon or something?
00:19:33.380 No.
00:19:33.700 I mean, like, look at it.
00:19:35.560 I mean, if you had a cultural tradition of slaying hippos, like their dragons, I think
00:19:41.240 it would help.
00:19:43.000 All of these Amazonian tribes, they'll stop being skinny and using these little tiny, like,
00:19:47.260 blow darts.
00:19:47.980 They'll just be an army of chads.
00:19:50.460 But they...
00:19:51.260 Literally, you've never seen anything like this.
00:19:53.600 There's nothing in your traditions, your history, or your culture that recognizes something
00:19:57.520 like this.
00:19:57.860 This is genuinely a monster.
00:20:00.400 This three-ton monster comes out...
00:20:01.920 But also, just the size of the mouth, it's just, like, greed personified.
00:20:05.380 This big, fat creature that wallows in the water all day and has a massive mouth.
00:20:11.000 And it's hyper-aggressive.
00:20:12.920 And you're just...
00:20:13.640 Like you said, you're just some tribes and you thought, oh, I'll go for a swim in the
00:20:16.120 river or something.
00:20:16.940 And then just three-ton monster comes at you and kills one of your friends.
00:20:21.800 Like, terrifying.
00:20:23.960 So, anyway, the problem that they have is how to get them, of course.
00:20:28.240 Because it's not easy to get a three-ton animal in the water.
00:20:32.260 Like, what are you doing?
00:20:33.080 How are you going to do it?
00:20:33.780 I don't even know what the plan is, right?
00:20:35.560 So, they were thinking, right, okay, well, because people hate it when we just kill them,
00:20:39.880 even though this is going to become a real problem if we don't just kill them,
00:20:42.660 we were thinking about capturing, anaesthetising, and transporting them to a facility to be
00:20:48.580 castrated, but this would cost half a million dollars per hippo.
00:20:53.600 What a waste of money.
00:20:54.700 I have an idea that's much cheaper.
00:20:56.820 What you do is you go to the source of all of the waterways and just drop poison melons
00:21:02.860 in and just wait for them to float down the waterways and eventually a hippo will eat one
00:21:09.680 and die.
00:21:10.240 I feel that might have a negative effect on the other wildlife that also eats watermelons.
00:21:14.660 But I feel like the hippos, you know, they're going to be dibsing these watermelons.
00:21:22.320 And you could potentially drop them near the hippos to maximise the effect.
00:21:27.080 Maybe the source of the waterways is a bit ambitious.
00:21:30.320 To be honest with you, I think just advertising to big game hunters around the world and saying,
00:21:35.600 look, you can shoot and eat a hippo.
00:21:38.240 We'll carve it up into hippo burgers.
00:21:40.240 So you can actually make money out of the hippos.
00:21:41.980 You'll have a little Colombian government employee following you around, like a squire,
00:21:47.040 like a medieval squire, and they'll carve up the hippo for you if you hunt it.
00:21:50.780 Yeah, you shoot the hippo, we'll grab it, we'll carve it up, you'll have hippo burgers,
00:21:54.260 it'll be amazing.
00:21:55.800 I'd do that, yeah.
00:21:56.700 I'm actually well up for that.
00:21:57.840 If you're killed by a hippo in the expedition, you know, sign here, it's not R.
00:22:04.220 That makes perfect sense, yeah.
00:22:06.000 But anyway, yeah.
00:22:07.180 So basically, 200 plus hippos.
00:22:11.220 And that's, again, that's only the ones that they've spotted.
00:22:13.220 Like, when you have really heavily and densely forested areas, it's very easy for animals to not be,
00:22:22.180 for you to not be aware of the animals in there.
00:22:24.060 Like, they did a thing in the Congo where they discovered there was something like 100,000 more gorillas than they expected,
00:22:28.780 because they simply can't tell where the gorillas are, because it's insanely dense vegetation.
00:22:34.760 And so they went around sort of counting per square mile the number of, like, they make little nests,
00:22:41.500 and so they count these nests, and they're like, oh, right, so there are actually way more gorillas than we realised.
00:22:45.500 But we just can't tell, because, of course, it's just vegetation, it's just a thick jungle for miles.
00:22:50.000 I find it interesting when they put, like, a camera in somewhere like Papua New Guinea,
00:22:55.420 which is one of the least explored land masses, and they'll just be like,
00:22:58.580 what is that?
00:22:59.640 It's like, what is that thing?
00:23:00.800 We don't know what that is.
00:23:01.840 And that's still happening now.
00:23:03.680 Like, we just find, I think recently they found a new species of carnivore out that way.
00:23:09.860 Yeah, they're finding, like, new species every year,
00:23:12.760 just because jungles are an impenetrable thing to discover stuff in.
00:23:17.260 But anyway, the point being, it would be unbelievably expensive for them to try and humanely stem the growth of this population.
00:23:27.180 So researchers are just like, look, just kill them, just kill them, just kill them.
00:23:30.460 They're going to get out of control.
00:23:32.440 They're going to trample crops.
00:23:34.040 They're going to cause famine.
00:23:35.840 They're going to eradicate native species.
00:23:38.100 And eventually we will have a hippo emperor of Colombia.
00:23:41.160 And if we don't do something about them now.
00:23:43.660 So they're literally just, look, it's the swiftest, most humane thing to do, just shoot them, make it a day out.
00:23:49.420 It'll be fun.
00:23:50.280 There's literally nothing else you can do.
00:23:52.160 The cost of killing hippos must be weighed against losing native flora and fauna in Colombia,
00:23:56.120 the second most biodiverse country in the world.
00:23:58.340 Yeah, it won't be when the bloody hippos are finished.
00:24:00.260 Yeah, so basically this is Pablo Escobar's revenge on the state of Colombia,
00:24:05.340 which I just thought was really, really interesting and funny, but not funny, of course,
00:24:10.860 if you're someone whose livelihood is being ruined by Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos.
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00:24:33.480 Thank you very much for watching.
00:24:35.080 Have a nice holiday and goodbye.
00:24:45.560 Have a nice holiday and goodbye.