Too beautiful :’)
“Like,” and/or reblog if you want the pygmy hippopotamus to be my next Animal of the Week.
The pygmy hippopotamus is a large mammal native to the forests and swamps of western Africa in Liberia and small populations in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast. The pygmy hippo is reclusive and nocturnal. It is one of only two extant species in the Hippopotamus family, the other being its much larger cousin the common hippopotamus. The pygmy hippo is clearly much cuter. Pygmy hippos are threatened by poaching, hunting, natural predators and war. The greatest threat to the remaining pygmy hippopotamus population of 3,000 in the wild is loss of habitat. The forests in which pygmy hippos live have been subject to logging, settling and conversion to agriculture, with little efforts made to make logging sustainable. As forests shrink, the populations become more fragmented, leading to less genetic diversity in the potential mating pool. Because of their reclusive lifestyle they are not a target of subsistence hunting, though they are hunted opportunistically by bush hunters. Their meat is said to be of excellent quality, like that of a wild boar; unlike those of the common hippo, the pygmy hippo’s teeth have no value. The effects of West Africa’s civil strife on the pygmy hippopotamus are unknown, but unlikely to be positive. Adult common hippos have no natural predators, but the pygmy hippopotamus is capable of being killed by leopards, pythons and crocodiles. How often this occurs, however, is unknown. Conservation status of endangered.
