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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPablo Escobar's Hippos Fill a Hole Left Since Ice Age Extinctions
When Pablo Escobar died in 1993, the Colombian drug kingpins four adult African hippopotamuses were forgotten. But the fields and ponds along the Magdalena River suited them. One estimate puts their current population at 50 to 80 animals: By 2050 there may be anywhere from 800 to 5,000 in a landscape that never before knew hippos.
They arent the only herbivores showing up in unexpected places. In Australia, feral camels roam the outback. Antelope are a common sight in rangelands from Texas to Patagonia. And feral hogs are everywhere. Conventional wisdom holds that these animals are causing new, and potentially damaging, impacts to beleaguered ecosystems. But a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that the lifestyles of these and other exotic fauna may be restoring the ecological functions of species lost to extinction during the last ice age.
We found that, amazingly, the world is more similar to the pre-extinction past when introduced species are included, said Erick Lundgren, an ecologist at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and the studys lead author.
Beginning 100,000 years ago, during the Late Pleistocene, a wave of extinctions claimed large animals throughout the world: mammoths in Eurasia, horses and giant sloths in the Americas and a bestiary of giant marsupials in Australia. Researchers have suspected that the loss of these megafauna may have left holes in the food webs and other cycles of the ecosystems where they lived, particularly in places like the Americas and Australia, where the extinctions were more intense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/science/pablo-escobar-hippos.html
Aristus
(66,322 posts)to destroying.
procon
(15,805 posts)hippos without making a trip to Africa. Some enterprising entrepreneur will build a luxury field camp in the jungle, serve haute de cuisine meals prepared by guest celebrity chefs, and bring in colorful local entertainment.
Day excursions to get up close and personal with a couple of tons of hippo. Night camps high in the trees for a romantic tryst while the hippos grunt and snort below.
It's a potential goldmine.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)procon
(15,805 posts)People might pay large coin for a ticket to see that cretin get slathered in molasses and tossed overboard into a herd of hungry, hungry hippos.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Princess Turandot
(4,787 posts)..in which the hippos are an important asset. While some of them relocated themselves to other parts of the river, several remained by the park.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)A keystone species is a species which has a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment
I really like that phrase.
Princess Turandot
(4,787 posts)Awhile back, they had consulted with some folks in Africa about their growing numbers of hippos. In Africa, the population is apparently reduced by annual droughts. In Colombia, they're in hippo paradise, year round. The African experts suggested killing some of them. The military managed to shoot one of them, then made the mistake of giving the newspapers a photo of the deceased hippo. The resulting uproar led to a federal judge issuing a permanent injunction against further culling.