Hippo talk: study sheds light on purpose of call and response | Wildlife | The Guardian
A call from a stranger may elicit myriad responses panic, confusion, maybe even excitement but it turns out that hippos have a rather more corporeal reaction: they spray dung.
Spraying dung. I’m sorry, but hippos are just gross. Even when they’re dressed up in little ballerina outfits, or pink or blue, or singing little ditties on TV, I just find them completely unappealing. I like most animals, as my posts reveal. I put up with their smelly habits and have spent more time than I like to admit cleaning up after them. But hippos, no thank you. You know their eating habits are particularly disgusting. They like to take water buffalo carcasses or any other large critter they find floating down the river and tuck them under a bank until they get good and ripe. When the flesh is just about falling off the bone, then they’re just yummy, Mr. Hippo reckons. So they’re sort of big, fat water vultures. And they’re dangerous too. I believe they rank just behind the elephant and the lion as most prolific killers of humans on the African continent. I think indigenous Africans fear them, but I bet they don’t like them, and I don’t blame them.