Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Artiodactyla > Hippopotamidae > Hippopotamus > Hippopotamus amphibius

Hippopotamus amphibius (hippopotamus)

Synonyms: Hippopotamus incognitus

Wikipedia Abstract

The common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), or hippo, is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae, the other being the pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis or Hexaprotodon liberiensis). The name comes from the ancient Greek for "river horse" (ἱπποπόταμος). After the elephant and rhinoceros, the common hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, the closest living relatives of the Hippopotamidae are cetaceans (whales, porpoises, etc.) from which they diverged about 55 million years ago. The common ancestor of whales and hippos split from other even-toed ungulates aroun
View Wikipedia Record: Hippopotamus amphibius

Infraspecies

Hippopotamus amphibius amphibius
Hippopotamus amphibius capensis
Hippopotamus amphibius etrusquus
Hippopotamus amphibius kiboko

Endangered Species

Status: Vulnerable
View IUCN Record: Hippopotamus amphibius

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
16
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
64
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 32.92
EDGE Score: 4.91
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Gestation [2]  7 months 24 days
Litter Size [2]  1
Litters / Year [2]  1
Maximum Longevity [2]  61 years
Nocturnal [3]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [4]  17 feet (505 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams
Weaning [2]  11 months 11 days
Adult Weight [2]  4.134 tons (3,750.00 kg)
Birth Weight [2]  88.185 lbs (40.00 kg)
Male Weight [4]  1.764 tons (1,600.00 kg)
Diet [3]  Herbivore
Diet - Plants [3]  100 %
Forages - Ground [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  3 years 6 months
Male Maturity [2]  3 years 6 months

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Emblem of

Togo

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Audio

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Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 3Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 4Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 5C. R. Field (1970) A Study of the Feeding Habits of the Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius Linn.) in the Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, With Some Management Implications, Zoologica Africana, 5:1, 71-86,
♦ 6The Diet of the Hippopotamus in Ndumu Game Reserve, Natal, as Determined by Faecal Analysis, J.S.B. Scotcher, D.R.M. Stewart, C.M. Breen, S.-Afr. Tydskr. Natuurnavors. 8:1-11 (1978)
♦ 7Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 8Nunn, C. L., and S. Altizer. 2005. The Global Mammal Parasite Database: An Online Resource for Infectious Disease Records in Wild Primates. Evolutionary Anthroplogy 14:1-2.
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Audio software provided by SoundManager 2
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0