Colombia.- The residents of Puerto Berrío, a Colombian municipality in the department of Antioquia, took a peculiar surprise when they at night saw a hippo in the streets loose.
The pachyderm turned out to be one of the hippos that reproduced the four specimens transferred to Colombia from Africa at the end of the last century by the late drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.
Several witnesses managed to take photos and videos of the unusual animal, which soon went around the world.
In one of these recordings, shared on the town’s Facebook page, you can see the hippo walking down the road in a residential area, completely ignoring the audience watching it impacted a few meters from the sidewalk, as well as people who are chasing him to record it.
The four hippos that Escobar bought in the 80s and 90s for his private zoo, on the farm near the Colombian municipality of Doradal, have reproduced to add up to 40 specimens or even more, becoming a real nightmare for the department of Antioquia .
According to the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development through its official website, “these animals are of a highly aggressive temperament, especially when they feel threatened, and can cause deadly injuries with their long fangs.”
However, environmental authorities are unclear how to curb the reproduction of pachyderms. Beyond the hippos being wild animals and it is dangerous to approach them, sterilization is too expensive and moving them to zoos poses a serious logistical problem due to their dimensions.
