Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just look at all the
excitement, (word used in a negative way), surrounding the demise of George
Floyd. It is a horrible thing, an awful thing, something that gone down really
wrong – and now the entire U.S. is shaking because of it. Why?
The answer, of course, is ‘why not’, deep beneath. The
American society is exhausted by the lockdown/self-isolation/quarantine/etc.,
this process was already breaking down, when George Floyd died, and now it is
being thrown out as the proverbial baby with the bathwater, in all of the- in
everything. Some people, according to Associated Press, claim that it is all
the ‘outsiders’ fault, but I say to them – look at the Donald. When Tayler
Swift is schooling you, then you know that you are in the wrong.
No, really, Taylor Swift, who once got embroiled in a fight
with the Kardashian-West clan, has a better grip on the situation than the
Donald does – and meanwhile, shit is hitting the fan from Miami to Seattle. The
governor of California is ordering a lockdown in L.A., (though not citywide,
admittedly). Yeesh!
…And on the other hand, Elon Mask’s SpaceX program is
progressing at a steady pace – the latest rocket either had a breakthrough and
went to space, or had a breakdown and exploded once again. What does COVID-19
have to do with it?
Everything in the background. People were sick and tired with
isolation to begin with, and were looking for a good excuse to end it, and they
got one, and it is one of the worst ones ever, (no, we are not talking of the SpaceX
rocket here). Therefore, now, the lockdown has effectively ended, (no really), and
with a fiery explosion too. USA! USA! They are not even trying to blame the RF
for this one, thank God. Maybe there is hope for the Americans yet. What next?
Well, today I wanted to talk about the hippos instead. Why?
Well, why not? After elephants and rhinos, they are the biggest land mammals of
the modern world…though that is a relative term, as I may’ve mentioned it: a
hippo, an elephant, a rhino, and a human can all stand on the black of a blue
whale, and the marine giant won’t even notice their combined weight, so
there!..
…Whales, (or rather – the cetaceans), are mentioned here for
a reason: the hippos are their closest relatives out of all the mammals, and
share many traits with the cetaceans, including a dependency on the water to
live; there are important differences too, but that brings us to taxonomy,
actually.
As people do not talk very often, there are two species of
hippos in the modern world – the common hippopotamus, (aka Hippopotamus amphibius), that everyone knows about, and the much
more obscure pygmy hippopotamus, (aka Hexaprotodon
liberiensis), which has a much smaller distribution than their larger
cousin does, (the two mammals may share the biological order and family, but
each belongs to its’ own genus), is much smaller than the common hippopotamus
is, period, and is also – proportionally more terrestrial than the common
hippopotamus is. Pause.
Let us start again. The common hippopotamus lives… in fresh
water, yes, but it also comes aground, where it prefers open spaces. Of course,
it is also big and heavy enough to muscle its way through most of riverside vegetation
(and beyond), and combined with its’ grazing, the common hippopotamus can turn
many an overgrown space into open space instead.
The pygmy hippopotamus is much shier and more retiring, and
while it spends more time on land than it cousin does, the land in question is
the African jungle, which is much more obscure, dark, damp and less assessable to
humans than the African savannah is. As such, the pygmy hippopotamus’ effect on
the landscape is much smaller too, and as a result, people became aware of it
much later than of the common hippo, (and no, I’m not talking about just the
Europeans and Americans, but about the other people too, such as the ancient
Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who became aware of the common hippo fairly
early in the human history), and they began to interact, (hunt, capture, study,
etc.), with this species much later than with the common hippo too. Such two
superficially similar (closely related) mammals and two such different fates!..
…As for the Biblical Behemoth, which might have been
inspired by the common hippo? The jury is still out on this one – it might be a
hippo… or a rhino, an elephant, even an African buffalo, which we really should
discuss one of those days, as we’ve discussed its’ cousins the bison, the yak
and the zebu earlier.
Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!
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