I'm not south African, but I saw the same stat.. usually because you can't see their young in the water..the are fiercely protective of them.. and the 14" tusks make things pretty dangerous..
Gavz - you are partly correct :-) on the African content ,excluding man , hippo account for the most deaths of humans amongest all African animals - hippo come out of the water at night to graze on the grass banks - whomever finds themself between the hippo and the waters edge is in serious troubles- as hippos are not the brightest of creatures , they understand the person is "stealing their water" which is their home during the day
apart from their 1600-3200 kg weight ,they run quite fast on land 30-40km/h = faster than most men/woman can run - so then these 3,3-5,2 meter in length (third largest land creature ) will leave its mark to whom is at the center of their anger :-)
Yeah, hippos scare the shit out of me, I was lucky once was swimming in a river in Nelspruit and one popped out no more than 20m from me, luckily she gave me a warning grunt, a courtesy they don't always offer. Needless to say I ran on water. Fun fact though, hippos do not have knees and therefore, even though they run fast, they cannot get over obstacles. So if a hippo chases you look for a fallen log or pavement and you should be fine.
They were stupid to go near the babies cos if that one pissy engine had cut out, the hippos would have just chomped and stamped that boat into driftwood then eaten everyone on board.
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