Real life has a way of presenting us with stories that give fiction a run for their money when it comes to how absurd they can sound.
Take the tale of the Cocaine Hippos, for example. If you read that “descendants of illegal hippos imported to Colombia by Pablo Escobar in the 1980s have multiplied and started attacking people”, one is tempted to say: ‘what the hell?’ – but it’s all true.
Many people are not aware that, in Africa, with its many species of dangerous wild animals, no other beast is responsible for more human deaths than the hippopotamuses.
In Colombia, the animals spread from the drug Lord zoo into nearby rivers where they reproduced fast, since they have no natural predators in Colombia.
The hippos have been declared ‘an invasive species which threaten the ecosystem’.
They live freely in rivers and breed without control, leading Colombia’s Ministry of Environment to start sterilizing them in November.
Daily Mail reported:
“‘They’re very, very dangerous. The hippos have started to attack people’, one local told Fox News.
Others branded the species as ‘unpredictable’ and ‘aggressive’, saying the best course of action if you come across one is to simply hide.
Meanwhile, Colombian environmental minister Susana Muhamad told the New York Times: ‘We are in a race against time in terms of permanent environmental and ecosystem impacts’.”
The sterilizations began in November, with two male hippos and one female undergoing the complex surgical procedure, part of a larger government effort to control the population of 169 of the mammals that roam around some rivers.
The plan also includes the sterilization of 40 hippos a year, the transfer some of them to other countries and possibly euthanasia.
“Sterilization takes time, because spotting and capturing the territorial, aggressive three-ton animals is complicated, David Echeverry López, chief of the environment office in charge of the plan, said in a video distributed to the press. Rain events around the area have complicated efforts to capture the animals. More grass means ‘they have an oversupply of food, so baiting them to capture them becomes even more complicated’, Echeverry said.”
There are around 169 hippos in Colombia, and they could reproduce to be a 1,000 by 2035.
“When the plan was first announced, the environment ministry said the procedure is expensive – each sterilization costs about $9,800 – and entails risks for the hippopotamus, including allergic reactions to anesthesia or death, as well as risks to the animal health personnel.”
The animals are wreaking havoc on Colombia’s ecosystem 40 years after Pablo Escobar, brought them in from a Florida zoo.
Fox News reported:
“Escobar, the “King of Cocaine,” forged his own private zoo of exotic animals at his sprawling estate, illegally importing kangaroos, zebras, hippos and others.
[…] Local veterinarians find themselves in this ‘race against time’ to figure out how to curb the population, including a very involved surgical sterilization process that, when dealing with aggressive, multi-ton creatures, is especially challenging.”
The Colombian government has pledged millions to combat the problem.
Hippos rival native species for resources, pollute the waterways with feces that could alter the water and pose a dangerous change for native inhabitants.
Call it ‘culling’ or ‘euthanasia’, the Colombian government may start to kill the beasts.
“‘It could not be said that a single strategy is effective for our objective, which is to control the population. We seek to implement this plan in the shortest possible time, precisely so that the impacts cease’, [Minister] Muhamad said.”
This story originally appeared on TheGateWayPundit
