Two hippos are fighting in a river. Both animals have their mouth open. Through their fight, lots of water splashes between their mouth. Of one hippo, you can see its giant tooth. Indeed they do have enormous teeth. The river was quite calm that morning, except for the disruption of these mighty beasts fighting.
The hippopotamus is native to Africa and loves the water. From Greek comes the name “hippopotamus,” meaning “water horse” or “river horse.” Following that fact, their closest living relatives are pigs, whales, and dolphins. Raed more about hippo in my blog post about the fascinating hippos.
Hippos, we know as very dangerous and aggressive animals. They use their large teeth and tusks to fight each other or threats. As you can see in the photograph, their enormous mouths are their biggest weapon. Unfortunately, their young will often get in the way of hippos fighting and can be injured or even killed.
The massive hippos spend most of their time in the water, but they cannot swim. Sinking to the bottom of the river and they will walk along the floor. Or they glide through the water by pushing themselves off of objects. They can stay underwater for 5 minutes before coming up for air. However, hippos travel on land to graze for food, sometimes up to 10 km / 6 mph, to eat their fill!
Hippos, Hippopotamus amphibius, are in the category vulnerable on the IUCN red list.
Not only hippos fight in the rivers, as well elephants fight in the water. Please also explore our other African photographs of wild animals. Our nature photographs are for sale of photo licenses or as a photographic print.
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Olivier –
Nice wildlife photograph with the two hippos in action!
Anette Mossbacher –
Sometimes the hippos have quite some aggressive fights in the water. Thanks so much, Olivier