The Unexpected Truth About Animals: Brilliant natural history, starring lovesick hippos, stoned sloths, exploding bats and frogs in taffeta trousers... by Cooke Lucy

Author:Cooke, Lucy [Cooke, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780857524119
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Species Hippopotamus amphibius

Some say that hee is five cubites high, and hath ox-hoofs, three teeth sticking out each side of his mouth, greater out then any other beasts, eared, tayled, and neighing like the horse, in the rest like the Elephant; he hath a mane, a snout turning up, in his inwards not unlike an horse, or asse, without hair.1

Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts, 1607

IN HIS BESTSELLING bestiary, the seventeenth-century clergyman Edward Topsell had little trouble accepting the existence of unicorns and satyrs, which he described in great detail. He was, however, decidedly sceptical about the hippopotamus. And who can blame him? At the time, few if any naturalists would have clapped eyes on one, and the fantastic accounts of the hippo being bandied about bear little resemblance to the animal we know.

Since the days of the Roman Empire, the hippo, Hippopotamus amphibius, had been portrayed as a monstrous, maned ‘river horse’ that could ‘vomit fire’ and which oozed blood.2, 3 The Greek writer Achilles Tatius described it ‘opening its nostrils wide and snorting out a reddish smoke as if on fire’.4 One could be forgiven for thinking he had been smoking something himself to fire up the imagination in this way, but it’s likely he’d just been perusing his Bible. The mighty, chaos-causing Behemoth from the Book of Job bears an uncanny resemblance to these ancient hippos and is widely considered to be its inspiration: ‘Under the lotus plants he lies, in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh.5 What strength it has in its loins, what power in the muscles of its belly!’ bellowed God in the telling of Job’s sorry story.

The biblical description of this mythical monster no doubt added to the far-fetched speculation surrounding the hippo’s size and fire-breathing abilities. Accounts of blood-sweating were a more credible mistake, however, and probably based on actual observation. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder provided an imaginative analysis in Naturalis Historia, his great encyclopaedia completed in AD 77:

When the animal has become too bulky by continued over-feeding, it goes down to the banks of the river, and examines the reeds which have been newly cut; as soon as it has found a stump that is very sharp, it presses its body against it, and so wounds one of the veins in the thigh; and, by the flow of blood thus produced, the body, which would otherwise have fallen into a morbid state, is relieved; after which, it covers up the wound with mud.6

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