About hippos? Dump? In fact, there are allusions to this phenomenon. In African legends, hippos used to be carnivores, especially like to eat fish. Later, they prayed to God to let them live in the water at the expense of giving up eating fish. In order to prove that he has fulfilled his promise, he will go crazy every time he defecates? Dump? Get up as if to say? Look! There is no fish residue in our feces? .
Hippo's? Dump? behaviour
But legend belongs to legend, but what about hippo? Dump? However, it is an indisputable fact that not only wild hippos, but also captive hippos in zoos will do the same. I believe many people have observed this phenomenon when watching hippos in the zoo, and some tourists who don't understand hippo habits even become on the spot? Random lucky audience? .
So why did hippos do this? What's good for their lives? What about hippos? Dump? Is behavior born like breathing and eating, or is it acquired like hunting and other skills? These problems are what we need to figure out next.
Dump? The importance of hippopotamus
Most of us do something with a purpose, or there are some driving factors for us to do it. This driver can be hobbies, rewards, or even just to kill time. This behavior can also be seen in animals. Hippo's? Dump? Since it is a common phenomenon in this species, this behavior must be extremely important to this species, or there must be something deeper behind it. In order to understand the principle of this phenomenon, countless researchers advance wave after wave. At present, hippo? Dump? The reason is basically clear.
hippopotamus
The more dispersed the excrement, the larger the territory. Most animals in nature have a sense of territory and have their own way of dividing territory. For carnivores such as tigers and lions, the way they mark their territory is to spray excrement on objects such as tree trunks or rocks, and often check and deepen the marking.
Hippo is also an animal with strong territorial consciousness, but its territorial consciousness is different from that of most animals. They are separated by rivers. To put it simply, when in the water, both male hippos and female hippos have a high tolerance for the same kind and almost no territorial consciousness, so we can often see many hippos in a certain water area. But once on shore, will hippopotamus's territorial consciousness improve? Wake up? If you cross the line casually, there is likely to be a fight.
In the water? Dense? hippopotamus
Hippopotamus is a large omnivorous freshwater species, which spends most of its time in the water, but sometimes it goes ashore, such as when eating. In fact, it is not difficult to understand that interspecific competition generally exists in nature, from the competition between two trees for sunlight, to the active killing of gray wolves by Siberian tigers, to the protection of their territory by hippos on the shore, all of which mean protecting their living resources.
It is worth mentioning that the deeper the hippo goes on land, the weaker its territorial consciousness will become. So generally speaking, hippopotamus's territory is usually a certain section of the river bank, including 10 hippopotamus, about 260 meters long. Of course, this range is not fixed and depends on many factors.
Tigers mark territory.
Most animals mark their territory by excreta, and hippopotamus is no exception, but like other animals, the more dispersed the excreta, the wider the territory marked.
Whether it's a lion, a tiger or a gray wolf, they basically go to one place and mark it accurately. Except hippo, which place does it use? Dump? The act of throwing feces everywhere means that you smell everywhere, so that other hippos will know that this land is their own when they come, so as to mark their territory as much as possible.
For animals, reproduction is an important thing, even an animal's lifelong mission. So in courtship, they will try their best and do all kinds of tricks. For example, some birds, males will decorate their nests beautifully with flowers, feces and some fungi during the courtship stage. House? Attracting the opposite sex, some have a dance, or highlight their beautiful facial features, can also help them attract the opposite sex.
For hippos, it is neither beautiful nor gentle, so what should they do? You can only do some strange things, that is? Dump? .
Courtship behavior of birds
For hippos, dump? It is something that can be compared. As the saying goes, it's good to throw shit, and you don't have to worry about having a girlfriend. Throwing shit high and far is a symbol of strength and status, which can attract more attention from the opposite sex.
We usually see a large number of hippos in a water area and instinctively think that they are social animals, but in fact they are not. They are more tolerant of other things than ordinary animals.
Generally speaking, hippos are allowed to play, sleep and even forage in their own territory, but there is only one thing that they will never give in, and that is the ownership of mating rights. For this reason, will they? Fight? .
The fight between hippos
However, can the fight between hippos be used besides tit-for-tat biting? Dump? So when two hippos have an argument, they don't choose to fight directly, but fight? Dump? See who throws high and far. Once the losing party shows a submissive attitude towards the winning party, the winning party will not be too embarrassed afterwards. In fact, in people's research, hippos? Dump? Behavior is extremely useful and can be used in many situations, such as when a male hippo is provoked, it will go crazy? Dump? Show your strength; When a hippo wants to be nice to another hippo, it also performs? Dump? .
what's up Dump? As I said before, hippos spend most of the day in the water, but there is one thing that they have to go ashore, and that is, when they are eating, they will go ashore to eat at dusk. They eat a lot of grass at a time, but in the season when grass is scarce, hippos will go deep into the land and eat enough food.
Doing so will lead to a problem, that is, hippos have poor eyesight and get lost easily. Once they can't get back into the water, hippos can't stand the vicious sun in Africa.
Hippos eat.
What shall we do? Fortunately, hippos have a keen sense of smell. If there are odor traces along the way, you can return to the original river.
In fact, the route of odor marking can be seen in many animals, such as domestic dogs, and friends in rural areas may be more familiar with it. Dogs go out with their owners and basically go out every once in a while? It's convenient to imagine that when we were young, we didn't understand, wouldn't we clean it all at once? I didn't know until I grew up that this was actually a dog's marking behavior. No matter where they go, they can go home through the urine mark.
puppy
Hippos are similar, they will be eating? Dump? So that hippopotamus can pass even if they come to the depths of the land unconsciously? Strong? Find its direction when it comes.
Are you sure? Dump? Compared with dogs? Murder? Urine labeling has two advantages: first, the taste covers a wider range and hippos are easier to find? Road signs? ; Second, it is not easy to disappear. It's easy to understand. If excrement is marked on plants or places, once the plants are destroyed, the odor mark will disappear and hippos will throw excrement everywhere. Even if one place is destroyed, there are thousands of places in Qian Qian, so they can boldly and safely graze in the deep land.
Hippos are on the shore.
Hippo? Dump? Is it natural?
Whether it is the wild hippopotamus in Africa or the hippopotamus in most zoos in the world, most of their defecation methods will be spit out. Many people are interested in it. Stunt? Whether it is innate or acquired is very interesting, so some scientists have done relevant investigations and found that both females and males, as well as hippopotamus cubs, will fall. Is it a routine operation, and it is also observed that individuals who were born and raised in zoos and have not had any contact with other hippos also appeared? Dump? The behavior of hippopotamus, from which the researchers preliminarily concluded that hippopotamus? Dump? Skills are born and don't need to be learned.
Hippos in the zoo
Of course, hippos don't dump it every time they defecate, depending on where they defecate. Generally speaking, hippos have a high probability of defecation as long as they don't stay in the water. Is the hippo observed so far? Dump? Most cases occur in the water, that is, when hippopotamus excretes in the water, there is a high probability that it will not shake, or its tail swings too small and looks relatively static.
But what needs to be mentioned in particular is that in the water, it means that the hippopotamus's buttocks are completely immersed in the water, and once floating on the water, the defecation will also be thrown up.
Underwater hippopotamus
Ecological function of hippopotamus feces
In fact, the topic of hippopotamus feces is far more than that? Dump? It's that simple. On May 6, 2065438, a research paper in Nature News pushed hippopotamus feces to the forefront of academic discussion and environmental protection.
At the junction of Tanzania and Kenya, whenever the river rises, a large number of dead fish will be washed ashore. At first, people thought it was caused by excessive use of pesticides in farmland in the upper reaches of the river. Later, ecologists made a detailed investigation and found that this was not the case. Finally, the researchers turned their attention to the hippopotamus in the Mara River.
Fish that died of lack of oxygen.
Emma, an ecologist at the Kaili Institute of Ecosystems? Rossi and others have studied hippos on the Mara River for five years and found that there are more than 4,000 hippos living in the Kenyan part of the Mara River. These hippopotamus are distributed in 65,438+0,765,438+0 hippopotamus ponds on the main roads and tributaries, and the amount of feces produced by these hippopotamus is as high as 8,500 kg per day. The consequences of such a huge amount of feces being discharged into the river are obvious.
Perhaps in the rainy season, because of the huge amount of river water, the harm caused by hippopotamus feces is less, but once the dry season comes, the rainfall is less, the amount of river water decreases, and the density of feces in water is higher.
These hippopotamus feces contain methane, hydrogen sulfide and other chemicals, and the decomposition of microorganisms in the water consumes a lot of oxygen, causing a large number of fish in the water to die of hypoxia.
There are a lot of hippos on the river.
However, hippopotamus excrement is not without its merits. Horse manure is not only the food for young hippos, but also very important for the whole Mara River basin.
Jonas, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, studied the ecological function of hippopotamus, and found that hippopotamus would eat a large number of aquatic plants rich in silica at night, and then transfer silicon into the water through defecation, which is very important for the health of the lower reaches of the Mara River.
Once hippopotamus feces decrease, the silicon content in rivers and lakes will decrease, which will lead to the outbreak of water blooms and the fish in the water will die of lack of oxygen.
In fact, everything should be viewed from many aspects. Like hippopotamus feces, too much will kill fish in the water, and too little will kill fish. But so far, 70,000 hippos in Africa go ashore to eat grass every day and discharge their feces into rivers, which is considered beneficial. They transfer nutrients from land to aquatic ecosystems.
In the Mara River basin, a large number of wild animals die every year. These animal carcasses and feces nourish the entire Serengeti Plain.