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About 500 people are killed in hippopotamus attacks each year. On Saturday, Kristen Yaldor was almost one of them. The 37-year-old American woman was on a river safari tour with her husband, Ryan, when she was suddenly attacked by a hippo that was said to be protecting her calf. The couple was on a guided canoe safari on Zimbabwe’s Zambezi River. Led by tour operator Wild Horizons, the safari group had three guests and two guides. While canoeing down the river, one of the guides spotted the hippo on the river’s right bank. He reportedly instructed the group to paddle...

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas

Adorable Harry the hippopotamus is no stick-in-the-mud when it comes to making friends with humans. The six-day-old pygmy hippo calf is filling the time of his doting carers after being rejected by his mother at birth. The 11lb baby was born last Thursday at a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa and requires round-the-clock care. Read more.

A South African farmer has been killed by the pet hippopotamus he raised from the age of five months, and which he once described as being 'like a son' to him. Humphrey the Hippo gouged owner Marius Els, 41, to death by repeatedly biting him in a vicious attack on Saturday night. The farmer's mutilated body was discovered submerged in a river running through his 400-acre farm in rural South Africa. ... Hippos are considered to one of the world's most dangerous animals. They are, by nature, very aggressive -... They commonly attack humans with no apparent provocation, usually using...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Officials at the Topeka Zoo say delays in getting a hippopotamus shipped to a zoo in San Francisco might mean the 5,500-pound animal will have to be shipped through Federal Express.

One possibility that Dr. Harer ruled out is that of a chariot accident. "If he fell from a speeding chariot going at top speed you would have what we call a tumbling injury -- he'd go head over heels. He would break his neck. His back. His arms, legs. It wouldn't gouge a chunk out of his chest." Instead, at his Toronto lecture, Harer brought up another, more exotic possibility -- that Tut was killed by a hippo. It's not as far out an idea as it sounds, hippos are aggressive, quick and territorial animals, and there is an artefact...

The Gambia’s minister of Forestry and the Environment, Hon. Jato Sillah has promised the people of Bakadaji in Nianija District of the Central River Region that the government under the leadership of His Excellency, Sheikh Prof. Dr. Alh. Yahya AJJ Jammeh has heard their cry on the incessant attack of hippopotamus on rice farms in the area and other places, and that a solution would soon be proffered. The minister said this during his nationwide tour of forest resources at the Bakadaji Forestry Station in Nianija while responding to a complaint raised by one Sarjo Sillah of Bakadaji who said...

Do you think that eating a diet of fruits and vegetables will enable you to fit into your skinny jeans? What about shellfish, will that help you lose weight? Let’s go to the zoos and aquariums to see the results of animals that eat these diets exclusively. Hippopotamus diets consist primarily of flood plain grasses with an occasional garnish of fallen fruit depending on the area. In the wild, hippopotamuses spend their day wallowing in the water at their favorite riverside beach waiting to overturn small boats. Hippopotamuses are an extremely fat animal, with a round body, short, stocky legs,...

It was afternoon and I was sipping my cool can of Ginger Ale, when I heard the first bellow, instantly followed by a loud grunt. Replacing the cap, I started pacing in the direction of the grunt. There was another low grunt and the sound was becoming indiscernible as I came closer. Soon I came upon two hippos facing each other, their mouths almost in contact, on the edge of a water channel. They were circling around in the water like two Sumo wrestlers performing their pre-game rituals. As it would be apparent in just a bit, this was no...

Bamako, Mali - An enraged hippopotamus killed a teenager and caused panic in several villages in the northern part of Mali, located along the bank of River Niger, the Malian Press Agency (AMAP) reported Monday. The victim, aged 16, was playing on the river bank along with another youth from one of the villages, when a female hippopotamus suddenly appeared from the river, a few metres from them. The animal, which had remained immersed in the river for a long time, suddenly attacked the two teenagers, according to an eyewitness. The animal seized the victim by the leg and dragged...

Bamako, Mali - An enraged hippopotamus killed a teenager and caused panic in several villages in the northern part of Mali, located along the bank of River Niger, the Malian Press Agency (AMAP) reported Monday. The victim, aged 16, was playing on the river bank along with another youth from one of the villages, when a female hippopotamus suddenly appeared from the river, a few metres from them. The animal, which had remained immersed in the river for a long time, suddenly attacked the two teenagers, according to an eyewitness. The animal seized the victim by the leg and dragged...

Or, if you're more technologically minded, you could always go for the nostalgia-inducing sounds of a 56k modem trying to connect. The ringtones are available as part of the BBC World Service's Save Our Sounds project - an effort to get people to record and send in 'endangered sounds' so they can be preserved for posterity. We've previously written about the project here (and also mentioned that it's one of nine BBC nominations for the Webby Awards.) The sound of the laughing hippo - which was recorded in the Serengeti - can best be described as a combination of the...

Jessica the Hippo has made herself a member of this South African family.

COAL MINE SEVEN, Svalbard, Norway (Reuters) - Fossils of a hippopotamus-like creature on an Arctic island show the climate was once like that of Florida, giving clues to risks from modern global warming, a scientist said. Fossil footprints of a pantodont, a plant-eating creature weighing about 400 kg (880 lb), add to evidence of sequoia-type trees and crocodile-like beasts in the Arctic millions of years ago when greenhouse gas concentrations in the air were high. "The climate here about 55 million years ago was more like that of Florida," Appy Sluijs, an expert in ancient ecology at Utrecht University in...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A former Miss South Africa has been attacked by a hippopotamus and bitten on the leg, local media report. Media reports on Wednesday said Diana Tilden-Davis, Miss South Africa 1991 and a runner up in the 1991 Miss World contest, was attacked while canoeing in the Okavango Swamps of neighbouring Botswana and was airlifted to Johannesburg's Milpark hospital. "We are treating her and she's in a stable condition," an official at the hospital told Reuters, but declined to give further details. Earlier this month, another South African woman was killed by a hippo while she and her...

Michael Moore: Stupid white man By David Harsanyi FrontPageMagazine.com | March 15, 2002 MICHAEL MOORE ISN’T YOUR AVERAGE MILLIONAIRE CELEBRITY. His oafish, disheveled appearance is both physically and intellectually disengaging, so much so that you might not take him very seriously. You should. Ostensibly, Moore exposes the hypocrisy and misconduct of establishment figures through his films, TV shows and books. In reality, Moore, whose political stance is uncommonly demented, obtuse and juvenile, uses kamikaze journalism to further a clear and precarious agenda. To distinguish himself from the flock of privileged leftist gadflies that litter the progressive causes, Moore likes to...