October 24, 2017 • 30 mins
When notorious drug kingpin Pable Escobar died, he left behind a legacy of brutal crime, opulent living and, oddly enough, four hippos. Fast forward to the modern day, and experts estimate as many as 50 hippopotamuses may roam free in the lands around Escobar's old estate. So what happens when these 4.5 ton animals decide to make themselves at home in Colombia?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Ben, I'm Noel,
and today we are delving into you know, even for us,
this is a weird one. Noel, what shows this? This
is ridiculous. Sister cool in the right place? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
well we have a bumper that plays right, but we
don't hear it. That's a little people behind the curtain
(00:45):
like that's added in posts. So you know, sometimes I
get a little confused as to you know, why are
we admired. It's a little early today too, if we're
being real, Um, we are talking about some some cool
stuff today. But I want to just preface by asking you, Ben,
have you ever snuggled a baby hippo. I have not,
and I would be hesitant to do so because in
(01:09):
their natural environment, hippopotamus will be one of the most
dangerous animals on the planet. I think it's the number
one most dangerous animal in terms of deaths per year
on the African continent. Yeah, and it's because they don't
they are they aren't predisposed to kill, but they are
intensely territorial and they can charge on land on foot
(01:33):
up to eighteen miles per hour, and like you said,
they are apparently responsible for more human deaths in Africa
than any other um animal, wild animal, that is. Yeah,
and especially when they become sexually active, that's when a
lot of the you know, possessive, territory oriented behavior begins.
(01:54):
But my point really is that the baby hippos are
are crazy cute. Oh yeah, they're a little weird like
you know, butterball, slime ball, you know, mutant things. And
I want one very much. Have you snuggled one? And
now I have no I have in my dreams there
were some people. There was a couple I believe, who
had a They raised hippo from juvenile age and then
(02:19):
when it was large, they lived near a river in Africa,
and when it was large and full grown, it would
still like go to the river and then just come
into their house. And it looked very It looked very cute.
But the reality of life with a hippo is way
different from those graceful ballet dancers you see in Fantasia,
(02:40):
a reality apparently lost to a certain drug lord by
the name of Pablo Escobar, who thought it would be
pretty cool to have a menagerie of exotic creatures. Um
things like what what did he have? Oh, he had
enough to I believe he began a zoo. Uh, he
(03:01):
had hit bos, he had ostriches, he had lots, he
had drafts as well. Yeah. Pablo Escobar, of course, is
the notorious drug bearing from the nineteen seventies and eighties
based in Colombia, and once upon a time he was
responsible for the majority of the world's cocaine. Like it's
(03:24):
claim to fame right there. And he he got to
the point where he was almost like a state power
a lot of local people. I thought he was great
because he was building infrastructure, provided job security. Uh, he
also was behind thousands of bombings and assassinations. And I
(03:45):
guess we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the excellent
Netflix show Narcos. Yeah, it is pretty pretty solid show.
I'm actually not up to date on it, but season
one kind of covers up through some of the real
manipulative behavior that he would do involving the government and
going further even than bribing to literally assassinating government officials
(04:06):
that didn't want to play ball with him. And no
spoilers in this story, even though it's real life, I
don't think you're allowed to consider that spoilers, but it
is as a television show involved, so you know how
I feel about this. I try to keep my hands
clean as far as spoilers are concerned. But we're here
to talk about a very specific aspect of the opulent
(04:27):
existence of Pablo Escobar Um. Like you said, he was
beloved by many who possibly there's a you know, conflagration
of love and utter terror and fears. It does seem so,
but um, you know, a lot of the poorer people
in medean Um revered him almost as a saint. He was.
(04:50):
He was referred to as Saint Pablo by many, and there,
you know, were these kind of defy deified drawings like
you'd see um images of a various saying it's um
those kind of images that you see printed on candles
that are supposed to cleanse your home and things like that.
There are even like these Narco saints that that there
are tons of different ones, and he was considered one
(05:13):
of them, a living saint, as it were, And it's
because he was very benevolent to the people that lived
around him in Mediana or in that area. And one
of the ways that he bestowed this benevolence upon them
was by creating a public zoo that people could just
come in roam free. And now Pablo Escobar was shot
(05:35):
in nineteen ninety three, was killed in a gunfight. But
before then, especially in the early eighties, was golden age
for as Noel said, this living Narco sat in his
palatial home, Hacienda Napoles, this halfway between Median and Bogata.
The stuff he built would put Michael Jackson and Donald
(05:57):
Trump to shame there. I feel like they were living
in the poorhouse. Yeah. He built a private bull ring,
these gigantic dinosaurs sculptures, which are awesome and they're really
weird looking to their very cartoonish and just massive. I
think he both them specifically for his kids. And he
built an airport. Uh and he had the zoo, public
(06:19):
zoo full of smuggled animals, and we name some of
those animals. He also, if you're gonna have a decent suit,
you gotta have some hippo's, right. He smuggled four hippopotamus is,
three females and a male who became known as Viejo
the Old One, and he smuggled them from California in
(06:41):
the eighties. As you pointed, out. The locals love this.
We get a free public zoo. If you were a
local person living at the time, the the entire Escobar
operation was trying to appear benevolent, unless you were also
trying to sell cocaine or attempting to stop them from
(07:02):
selling cocaine, or again angered Pablo Escobar in any way.
When the Colombian government took over the hacienda in the
early nineties, right Escobar's zoo was split up and it
was shipped off to other legal zoos, with one notable
(07:23):
exception or four notable exceptions, the hippos. Right lest we
think that these animal wranglers were lazy or or uninterested,
let's consider the problem of the hippopotamus. We're talking about
a a four point five tons creature, a four and
(07:46):
a half ton creature that can, you know, get an attitude.
Hippos are herbivorous, but they are aggressive and the name
actually comes from river horse. Have your Have you heard
about that? Is it sort of like that movie The
water Horse with the the the Locknus monster thing. I
(08:08):
haven't seen that. I haven't either, but it's kind of
like a hippo. I guess it's is it in the
water is but I think it's just a little bit
more fully submersible. And it's also a fantasy, uh creature,
it's not. You know what, it does remind me of
the hipo. Have you guys seen that movie on Netflix? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
with the super Pig. It's a Korean film, right, very
(08:29):
hippo hippo Poda. I thought the same thing in the animal. Yeah,
I think it is a pig, right, genetically based on
a pig, and it's it's huge. In real life, the
hippo is the third largest land mammal on on Earth.
(08:50):
And even though they look like pigs, one thing that's
really interesting is there their closest living relatives are cetaceans
like whales and dolphins, so they come from a background
of of water lovers. Dude, if you if you looked
at the inside of one of these creatures mouths, it
is like looking into the gaping maw of of hell. Um.
(09:12):
It's foul. It's just rotten teeth and weird textured mouth
skin and gums and broken Oh my gosh. It's just
gives me the creeps. But we digress. Um. So hippos
in their natural state, they actually live in a harem,
(09:33):
which seems like a loaded term, but it's not because
it's sort of got an alpha male. Uh. And then
you know a group of females in any offspring associated
with it. So if another male, for example, approached you know,
any of the females in a harem, there would be
hell to pay. There would be some serious charging going on.
(09:55):
But after the menagerie was split up and the shipped
various and the century parts of the world, the hippopotamus
is continue to be an issue because the fence that
was meant to, you know, contain these creatures just wasn't
nearly sturdy enough. You were saying, I think there were
(10:19):
three females, and then we got our old man, the
the ajo. The ajo is that right? Um? So you
know all they have to do in this environment is
basically hang around, um and get busy, you know, make
some serious hippo love. And this is pretty cool. It
turns out that in their native habitat in Africa, hippos
(10:43):
can become sexually active between the ages of seven and
nine for males and then nine and eleven for lady.
Hippos and uh pablos were becoming sexually active as as
young as three years old, because they were just pretty
happy they were in this pond. You know, the environment
(11:05):
was right for them, the climate was right. They didn't
really have any natural predators to be concerned about. They're
just chilling in this pond. And so hippo sex was
was rampant, and fertile females can give birth to a
single calf every year. And this is like a thirty
year issue we're talking about here, right, like two thousand seven,
(11:28):
I think was when we started really hearing the locals
reporting issues with the hippos that we're gonna get into
in a minute. But they've been kicking it there since
the eighties, right, Yeah, they've been kicking it there since
they were imported in the eighties. And there were just
four of them. Now there could be as many as
an estimated fifty, which makes me wonder about the viability
(11:50):
of the the genetic diversity in the population totally. But
uh yeah, But with the exception of one hippo named Pepe,
who was killed by Colombian soldiers in two thousand nine,
with that exception, these hippos are pretty much thriving most
of the time. So Pepe would have been son of
(12:12):
the old One. Yeah, Pepe would have been son of
the Old One, would be a great superlative like Peppe,
son of the Old One. I don't know, it sounds
like there's a story there. Well, there will be more
stories to continue. No. I think he was probably more
just pro hippo and pro harem and anti most other
(12:34):
things except for water and food. This seems like a
hippo attitude. As I was saying, their population is continuing
to grow, their thriving, we're talking six percent a year,
and with the fact that they are uh maturing in
a younger age and reproducing almost said reproducing. That sounds
(12:58):
very that says a little BBC. Yeah, they're reproducing at
a significantly younger age, and this means that they will
inevitably impact to the ecosystem in their native ecosystem. All right,
(13:19):
let's just be honest. We're all adults here right. In
their native ecosystem, their feces is extremely important to wildlife
in the river. Fish and insects love hippo poop. They
live off of it. They are in it and of it.
It's there, it's their favorite thing. But this means that
in this new ecosystem, in Colombia. Scientists are becoming concerned
(13:44):
that the rivers will get too clogged with all this
hippo poop. Yeah, I was actually I found this uh
National Geographic article about the whole ecosystem nightmare that is
the Pablo Escobar hippo harem. And it turns out that
with this abundance of waste, over abundance of waste in
(14:06):
the water, it can cause all kinds of problems, including
algae um blooms I guess, and other dangerous micro organisms
that can flourish um. So you end up with things
like you know, massive fish kills and the like and um,
especially when there's higher temperatures and like you said, a
(14:28):
lower oxygen levels that can reak all kinds of havoc
on an ecosystem. So it's like, you know, hippos aren't
native to Colombia, and now we have fifty plus of
them running rampant. And there's also the issue of the
locals not really appreciating the danger involved in these creatures
(14:49):
because they look like, you know, they're huge, but you know,
to to the average person, they do kind of look docile.
They don't seem like they're angry, they're they're more or
less cute, even the big ones. And I think another
dangerous thing of about them is that they don't seem
like they would charge their deceptively fast over a short distance,
you know what I mean. And all you have to see,
(15:10):
all you have to do is watch it yawn once
and you get an idea of the potential. This problem
is exacerbated because these days the old Hacienda is a
theme park. It's about three hours from it, and it
has a water park, a zoo, animal themed attractions. They
have events. You know, they're trying to make some lemonade
(15:32):
out of lemons historically speaking. But the hippos are still there,
their models of hippos, you know, they've got statues. I
think the dinosaurs are still there. But they also have,
you know, concrete statues of hippos which have become sort
of famous locally and in this case internationally. And it
(15:53):
brings us to this larger question too. I don't want
to derail as too much here, but there are numerous
examples of invasive animal populations that have just been left
to thrive because the new ecosystem they're in resembles their
(16:17):
native ecosystem close enough for government work to the point
where they can thrive. Another example would be camels in Australia.
Who heard about this, right, there are like three hundred
thousand feral camels just walking around Australia. And it's like
crazy because you think about feral cats and that seems
(16:38):
pretty manageable. But like even in my neighborhood in Atlanta,
like we have a feral cat problem, but compared to
a feral hippo problem, I would say that is a
pretty benign issue. You know, in the worst you're gonna
get is they're gonna be like kind of crowding around
your feet as you're walking into a gas station or
something like that. You know, I can't imagine just being
approached by a feral hippo. But like I was saying too,
(16:59):
that there's an issue here too, because like the locals
in in Median in this area near the resort, I
guess let's call it that at this point the theme park,
you know, Casa de Escobar, folks don't really have a
sense of urgency in like you're seeing these creatures. It's
kind of like just sort of an anomaly and sort
of an odd like what the heck is that and
in fact, in this BBC article on the subject, I
(17:22):
read a really interesting account where a child spoke to
a local newspaper in Columbia, the l Columbiano, and apparently
children near the Hasciana Napolis actually took home a baby
hippo cap And here's the quote from BBC. Uh quote.
(17:43):
My father brought a little one home once. I called
him Luna because he was very sweet. We just fed
him milk. And then another child told the paper, my
father has captured three. It's nice because you have a
little animal at home. We bottle feed them because they
only drink milk. They have slipperies in you pour water
and they produce a kind of slime. You touch them
(18:03):
and it's like soap. Isn't that charming? That is charming
yet terrifying, because what happens if one of the bull
hippos sees a little school kid making off with their baby?
What happens if any kid, any human child, is around
an adult hippo. I would eat The risk are there.
(18:24):
It's not to quote a deep cut movie, but no,
that's a clear and present danger here with the Harrison Ford.
I believe so. I believe so if he really bored
me when I was a kid. I don't want to
bet the farm on it. I mainly remember that it
was it was right around that time he was doing
all those political thrillers, Like there was that one and
(18:44):
then there was the one where he's like, get off
my plane where he's like the president was that air
Force one was a force? But um, you know, there
are some potential solutions being discussed and they ranged for
them the yeah, okay, to the ridiculous, and this is
ridiculous history. So I guess we better, you know, maybe
(19:05):
start with the ridiculous. Should we go you know, backwards
ridiculous to more reasonable? Um, let's let's do pros and cons. Yeah,
I think that's smart. I think that's smart. So in
this BBC article that from the BBC World Service by
William Creamer Um, there is an interview with a gentleman
named David A Chevalret who is from He's like from
(19:26):
a local wildlife official from the area, and um, he
offers ideas ranging from building a reserve with you know,
proper hippo fences because obviously the original fences did not
do the job. Um, but he says it would you
know cost an excess of five grand. This is a
(19:46):
pretty poor area. That's not chump change. It's kind of
a big deal to deal with the remnants of the
opulent Escobars. Bizarre, you know, pretty selfish if we're being honest, lifestyle,
you know, not really thinking ahead here, Mr Escobar. So
pro it removes it removes this hippo population from the
(20:09):
local human population. Con it's expensive, and I get the
feeling that's just the entry price, not counting maintenance. Cohn
again in and since these hippos are already very well
known in the local and global arena, there would also
have to be paid dedicated staff to prevent people from
(20:32):
messing with the hippos. It's not a perfect thing. It's
not not a perfect proposal, but it's a you got
to do something right. The one of the things that's
not an option is doing nothing. They're aggressive, the territorial
they're breeding. I know there's you know another possibility where
(20:53):
we say, well, we have environmentalists working at the scene,
their charities were concerned. Why can they not simply transport
the hippos right to their giant It's hard, it's very expensive,
so costly, and we don't know how many there even are, right, Like,
there's like there's you know what, if they miss a
(21:14):
single male, then it's like game over. It's like, you know,
might as well, it's like starting over again. Might not
happen overnight, obviously, but before you know it, you're gonna
be back up to your your ears and hippos. And
even if we could, even if someone took upon themselves
the cost of transporting these massive animals to a a
(21:34):
native region, right, what they're going to find is that
there's a there's a very real likelihood that they could
transmit unfamiliar diseases to native hippos and then boom, we've
lost all of the hippos. Possibly that's not probable, but
it's possible. It's a very real concern. I know, I
promised to go from ridiculous to sensible, and I think
(21:56):
I I did not deliver on that. I think I
started with sensible. So let's let's do the opposite extreme. Um,
since since we we promised some ridiculousness. Um uh, since
you did? I did. You're right, You're right. I can
only speak for myself here. Another local wildlife authority suggested, Um,
you know, let's just kill them all. In barbecue them
(22:18):
and a feast on their flesh. That is that is
the quote. I think they should barbecue them and eat them,
says Patricio von Hildebrand, right. And apparently this came from
a situation where one of the hippo's was accidentally electrocuted
to death on a um poorly calibrated electric fence, shall
(22:40):
we say, And the locals came around, chopped up the
carcass and barbecue them. And apparently, um hippo tastes a
lot like pork, which makes sense considering their uh, pig
like appearance. Yeah, I would, personally, I would be hesitant
to eat it. And this is this is something that
comes up. Another biologist had said that this meat, regardless
(23:05):
of how you prepare it, may again have some sort
of unexpected disease, right, possibly something that could cause meningitis.
But there's another solution, or another proposed solution, and that's
the idea that we just get rid of all the males,
you know, like like Herod in the Bible. What we
were saying earlier, though, that's tricky because you know what
(23:28):
if one of them holds up somewhere they're on the lamb,
and uh, you know we miss one and then you
know it was a wasted effort, right, like you said,
square one or back to back to hippo zero zero.
And then there's the you know, the castration idea, which is,
you know, a little squeaky, but let's go into it. Okay. Sure,
(23:50):
So if we want to be humane, right then instead
of eliminating this breedy possibility by eliminating all the males,
we have kicked around the idea we as a species,
not just me, and yeah, that's just us. So we're
gonna handle the hippo problem, right add On, that's the
(24:12):
first thing you said to me this morning, right, Ben,
It's time to handle the hippo problem. You and I
are actually leaving after recording this to go to Columbia
for something different, but I think we'll we'll do the
hippo thing on the way. The problem is that hippo's,
aside from being big, aside from being aggressive, there's a
real danger if we try to conduct that kind of
(24:32):
neutering operation on them, right, we don't know when they'll
get back up. Yeah, because hippo's, as it turns out,
despite their massive stature, are pretty dainty and delicate when
it comes to chemicals, and in order to perform these procedures,
these creatures would have to be anesthetized and it could
(24:55):
potentially kill them, right, and this would end up, you
know that this would be a situation where with the
best of intentions, they just ended up killing all the
male hippos. The other problem here is that regionally a
lot of the locals have kind of taken this on.
(25:16):
Is a local mascot. I think they're proud of, you know.
And there was one hippo that was castrated, that was
successfully castrated, and people hated it. They were saying, oh,
why do you have to castrate this hippo? Just Steve. Yeah,
let Steve be castrate the politicians. That was the idea.
(25:37):
That's a really good bumper sticker. Lets Steve or castrate
politicians like in the whole split them up. Now me
two different ones, okay, because you know, depending on the car,
we gotta know where the stickers stickers. It's got a
new car today. By the way, no bumper stickers shall
graze this vehicle. Bumper sticker. Let us know how you
feel about bumper stickers. And as we end the episode today,
(26:02):
it's true the hippos are still out there and also
Ferrell camels in Australia. But there is a ray of
sunshine in the story, has a handful of rays. It's
pretty interesting story. Um. Nobody has been hurt or killed
by any of these hippos to date that we have
discovered and looking into this, so you know, maybe uh.
(26:24):
I think the biggest concern is probably the danger to
the ecosystem and you know, potentially a little kid getting
squashed because you know, he or she is trying to
take home a cute, cute, sweet, slippery, soapy baby hippo
calf uh. The World Wildlife Foundation does call the situation
a ticking time bomb because depending on their rate of reproduction,
(26:50):
if there is nothing done, then eventually, yes, it will
turn violent and innocent humans could could be harmed or killed. However,
there is an opportunity. I think there is an opportunity
to create some rays of sunshine from this. As you said,
you know what if there were a safe place right
(27:12):
where the hippo's will be guarded, allowed to live their
hippo lives hip behaven, I do. Let's let's have a
place like that where people can observe them from a
distance and help support you know, the associated cost, and
not accidentally find one in a river. You know, it's
(27:33):
it's sort of It reminds me of the idea of
the old question of what's the scariest thing to see
in the woods if you're camping sasquatch if you can
find one? Right the World Champions of Hide and Seek,
there's one of the answers is a bear cub because
the mother is somewhere totally and you don't know where.
(27:55):
Or sasquatchub or a sasquatch, a sasquab, sasquab. It's tough
to say, but it's worth it. It's a lot of fun. Um. Well,
I think yeah. Is that that? That does it for
Escobar and his his his hippo hare. Um. Yes, thus
ends our episode on Pablo Escobar's hippo Haven. That's better, Well,
(28:19):
the haven is coming, Yeah, hopefully the hippo Haven is
on the way. This does, not, however, end our show.
We'll be back very soon with something bizarre, something weird.
Something dare I say ridiculous, You don't have to. Well,
(28:40):
it's it's out there now. In the meantime, we'd love
to hear from you have you visited Colombia? Have you,
by any chance happened to see the hacienda yourself? And
also what was the one we asked earlier? What do
you think of bumper stickers? That's the burning question really
that we were left it today, that's my take away anyway.
(29:02):
But um, you can do all that stuff if you want.
You can email us at what are we Ridiculous at,
how Stuff Works dot com. That's us, and you can
find us at all the other various social media's. I
think in an earlier episode, if I recall correctly, we're
still speculating on a Pinterest. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not.
I'm not about that Pinterest life. Well, we'll put a
(29:23):
pin in that for now. I know they're not all
going to be great. They're not all giving you home runs,
so right as send us her thoughts, your dreams, your nightmares,
and you know, if you have an idea for an episode,
we'd love to hear that too, and we'll catch you
next time on Ridiculous History
Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Ben, I'm Noel,
and today we are delving into you know, even for us,
this is a weird one. Noel, what shows this? This
is ridiculous. Sister cool in the right place? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
well we have a bumper that plays right, but we
don't hear it. That's a little people behind the curtain
(00:45):
like that's added in posts. So you know, sometimes I
get a little confused as to you know, why are
we admired. It's a little early today too, if we're
being real, Um, we are talking about some some cool
stuff today. But I want to just preface by asking you, Ben,
have you ever snuggled a baby hippo. I have not,
and I would be hesitant to do so because in
(01:09):
their natural environment, hippopotamus will be one of the most
dangerous animals on the planet. I think it's the number
one most dangerous animal in terms of deaths per year
on the African continent. Yeah, and it's because they don't
they are they aren't predisposed to kill, but they are
intensely territorial and they can charge on land on foot
(01:33):
up to eighteen miles per hour, and like you said,
they are apparently responsible for more human deaths in Africa
than any other um animal, wild animal, that is. Yeah,
and especially when they become sexually active, that's when a
lot of the you know, possessive, territory oriented behavior begins.
(01:54):
But my point really is that the baby hippos are
are crazy cute. Oh yeah, they're a little weird like
you know, butterball, slime ball, you know, mutant things. And
I want one very much. Have you snuggled one? And
now I have no I have in my dreams there
were some people. There was a couple I believe, who
had a They raised hippo from juvenile age and then
(02:19):
when it was large, they lived near a river in Africa,
and when it was large and full grown, it would
still like go to the river and then just come
into their house. And it looked very It looked very cute.
But the reality of life with a hippo is way
different from those graceful ballet dancers you see in Fantasia,
(02:40):
a reality apparently lost to a certain drug lord by
the name of Pablo Escobar, who thought it would be
pretty cool to have a menagerie of exotic creatures. Um
things like what what did he have? Oh, he had
enough to I believe he began a zoo. Uh, he
(03:01):
had hit bos, he had ostriches, he had lots, he
had drafts as well. Yeah. Pablo Escobar, of course, is
the notorious drug bearing from the nineteen seventies and eighties
based in Colombia, and once upon a time he was
responsible for the majority of the world's cocaine. Like it's
(03:24):
claim to fame right there. And he he got to
the point where he was almost like a state power
a lot of local people. I thought he was great
because he was building infrastructure, provided job security. Uh, he
also was behind thousands of bombings and assassinations. And I
(03:45):
guess we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the excellent
Netflix show Narcos. Yeah, it is pretty pretty solid show.
I'm actually not up to date on it, but season
one kind of covers up through some of the real
manipulative behavior that he would do involving the government and
going further even than bribing to literally assassinating government officials
(04:06):
that didn't want to play ball with him. And no
spoilers in this story, even though it's real life, I
don't think you're allowed to consider that spoilers, but it
is as a television show involved, so you know how
I feel about this. I try to keep my hands
clean as far as spoilers are concerned. But we're here
to talk about a very specific aspect of the opulent
(04:27):
existence of Pablo Escobar Um. Like you said, he was
beloved by many who possibly there's a you know, conflagration
of love and utter terror and fears. It does seem so,
but um, you know, a lot of the poorer people
in medean Um revered him almost as a saint. He was.
(04:50):
He was referred to as Saint Pablo by many, and there,
you know, were these kind of defy deified drawings like
you'd see um images of a various saying it's um
those kind of images that you see printed on candles
that are supposed to cleanse your home and things like that.
There are even like these Narco saints that that there
are tons of different ones, and he was considered one
(05:13):
of them, a living saint, as it were, And it's
because he was very benevolent to the people that lived
around him in Mediana or in that area. And one
of the ways that he bestowed this benevolence upon them
was by creating a public zoo that people could just
come in roam free. And now Pablo Escobar was shot
(05:35):
in nineteen ninety three, was killed in a gunfight. But
before then, especially in the early eighties, was golden age
for as Noel said, this living Narco sat in his
palatial home, Hacienda Napoles, this halfway between Median and Bogata.
The stuff he built would put Michael Jackson and Donald
(05:57):
Trump to shame there. I feel like they were living
in the poorhouse. Yeah. He built a private bull ring,
these gigantic dinosaurs sculptures, which are awesome and they're really
weird looking to their very cartoonish and just massive. I
think he both them specifically for his kids. And he
built an airport. Uh and he had the zoo, public
(06:19):
zoo full of smuggled animals, and we name some of
those animals. He also, if you're gonna have a decent suit,
you gotta have some hippo's, right. He smuggled four hippopotamus is,
three females and a male who became known as Viejo
the Old One, and he smuggled them from California in
(06:41):
the eighties. As you pointed, out. The locals love this.
We get a free public zoo. If you were a
local person living at the time, the the entire Escobar
operation was trying to appear benevolent, unless you were also
trying to sell cocaine or attempting to stop them from
(07:02):
selling cocaine, or again angered Pablo Escobar in any way.
When the Colombian government took over the hacienda in the
early nineties, right Escobar's zoo was split up and it
was shipped off to other legal zoos, with one notable
(07:23):
exception or four notable exceptions, the hippos. Right lest we
think that these animal wranglers were lazy or or uninterested,
let's consider the problem of the hippopotamus. We're talking about
a a four point five tons creature, a four and
(07:46):
a half ton creature that can, you know, get an attitude.
Hippos are herbivorous, but they are aggressive and the name
actually comes from river horse. Have your Have you heard
about that? Is it sort of like that movie The
water Horse with the the the Locknus monster thing. I
(08:08):
haven't seen that. I haven't either, but it's kind of
like a hippo. I guess it's is it in the
water is but I think it's just a little bit
more fully submersible. And it's also a fantasy, uh creature,
it's not. You know what, it does remind me of
the hipo. Have you guys seen that movie on Netflix? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
with the super Pig. It's a Korean film, right, very
(08:29):
hippo hippo Poda. I thought the same thing in the animal. Yeah,
I think it is a pig, right, genetically based on
a pig, and it's it's huge. In real life, the
hippo is the third largest land mammal on on Earth.
(08:50):
And even though they look like pigs, one thing that's
really interesting is there their closest living relatives are cetaceans
like whales and dolphins, so they come from a background
of of water lovers. Dude, if you if you looked
at the inside of one of these creatures mouths, it
is like looking into the gaping maw of of hell. Um.
(09:12):
It's foul. It's just rotten teeth and weird textured mouth
skin and gums and broken Oh my gosh. It's just
gives me the creeps. But we digress. Um. So hippos
in their natural state, they actually live in a harem,
(09:33):
which seems like a loaded term, but it's not because
it's sort of got an alpha male. Uh. And then
you know a group of females in any offspring associated
with it. So if another male, for example, approached you know,
any of the females in a harem, there would be
hell to pay. There would be some serious charging going on.
(09:55):
But after the menagerie was split up and the shipped
various and the century parts of the world, the hippopotamus
is continue to be an issue because the fence that
was meant to, you know, contain these creatures just wasn't
nearly sturdy enough. You were saying, I think there were
(10:19):
three females, and then we got our old man, the
the ajo. The ajo is that right? Um? So you
know all they have to do in this environment is
basically hang around, um and get busy, you know, make
some serious hippo love. And this is pretty cool. It
turns out that in their native habitat in Africa, hippos
(10:43):
can become sexually active between the ages of seven and
nine for males and then nine and eleven for lady.
Hippos and uh pablos were becoming sexually active as as
young as three years old, because they were just pretty
happy they were in this pond. You know, the environment
(11:05):
was right for them, the climate was right. They didn't
really have any natural predators to be concerned about. They're
just chilling in this pond. And so hippo sex was
was rampant, and fertile females can give birth to a
single calf every year. And this is like a thirty
year issue we're talking about here, right, like two thousand seven,
(11:28):
I think was when we started really hearing the locals
reporting issues with the hippos that we're gonna get into
in a minute. But they've been kicking it there since
the eighties, right, Yeah, they've been kicking it there since
they were imported in the eighties. And there were just
four of them. Now there could be as many as
an estimated fifty, which makes me wonder about the viability
(11:50):
of the the genetic diversity in the population totally. But
uh yeah, But with the exception of one hippo named Pepe,
who was killed by Colombian soldiers in two thousand nine,
with that exception, these hippos are pretty much thriving most
of the time. So Pepe would have been son of
(12:12):
the old One. Yeah, Pepe would have been son of
the Old One, would be a great superlative like Peppe,
son of the Old One. I don't know, it sounds
like there's a story there. Well, there will be more
stories to continue. No. I think he was probably more
just pro hippo and pro harem and anti most other
(12:34):
things except for water and food. This seems like a
hippo attitude. As I was saying, their population is continuing
to grow, their thriving, we're talking six percent a year,
and with the fact that they are uh maturing in
a younger age and reproducing almost said reproducing. That sounds
(12:58):
very that says a little BBC. Yeah, they're reproducing at
a significantly younger age, and this means that they will
inevitably impact to the ecosystem in their native ecosystem. All right,
(13:19):
let's just be honest. We're all adults here right. In
their native ecosystem, their feces is extremely important to wildlife
in the river. Fish and insects love hippo poop. They
live off of it. They are in it and of it.
It's there, it's their favorite thing. But this means that
in this new ecosystem, in Colombia. Scientists are becoming concerned
(13:44):
that the rivers will get too clogged with all this
hippo poop. Yeah, I was actually I found this uh
National Geographic article about the whole ecosystem nightmare that is
the Pablo Escobar hippo harem. And it turns out that
with this abundance of waste, over abundance of waste in
(14:06):
the water, it can cause all kinds of problems, including
algae um blooms I guess, and other dangerous micro organisms
that can flourish um. So you end up with things
like you know, massive fish kills and the like and um,
especially when there's higher temperatures and like you said, a
(14:28):
lower oxygen levels that can reak all kinds of havoc
on an ecosystem. So it's like, you know, hippos aren't
native to Colombia, and now we have fifty plus of
them running rampant. And there's also the issue of the
locals not really appreciating the danger involved in these creatures
(14:49):
because they look like, you know, they're huge, but you know,
to to the average person, they do kind of look docile.
They don't seem like they're angry, they're they're more or
less cute, even the big ones. And I think another
dangerous thing of about them is that they don't seem
like they would charge their deceptively fast over a short distance,
you know what I mean. And all you have to see,
(15:10):
all you have to do is watch it yawn once
and you get an idea of the potential. This problem
is exacerbated because these days the old Hacienda is a
theme park. It's about three hours from it, and it
has a water park, a zoo, animal themed attractions. They
have events. You know, they're trying to make some lemonade
(15:32):
out of lemons historically speaking. But the hippos are still there,
their models of hippos, you know, they've got statues. I
think the dinosaurs are still there. But they also have,
you know, concrete statues of hippos which have become sort
of famous locally and in this case internationally. And it
(15:53):
brings us to this larger question too. I don't want
to derail as too much here, but there are numerous
examples of invasive animal populations that have just been left
to thrive because the new ecosystem they're in resembles their
(16:17):
native ecosystem close enough for government work to the point
where they can thrive. Another example would be camels in Australia.
Who heard about this, right, there are like three hundred
thousand feral camels just walking around Australia. And it's like
crazy because you think about feral cats and that seems
(16:38):
pretty manageable. But like even in my neighborhood in Atlanta,
like we have a feral cat problem, but compared to
a feral hippo problem, I would say that is a
pretty benign issue. You know, in the worst you're gonna
get is they're gonna be like kind of crowding around
your feet as you're walking into a gas station or
something like that. You know, I can't imagine just being
approached by a feral hippo. But like I was saying too,
(16:59):
that there's an issue here too, because like the locals
in in Median in this area near the resort, I
guess let's call it that at this point the theme park,
you know, Casa de Escobar, folks don't really have a
sense of urgency in like you're seeing these creatures. It's
kind of like just sort of an anomaly and sort
of an odd like what the heck is that and
in fact, in this BBC article on the subject, I
(17:22):
read a really interesting account where a child spoke to
a local newspaper in Columbia, the l Columbiano, and apparently
children near the Hasciana Napolis actually took home a baby
hippo cap And here's the quote from BBC. Uh quote.
(17:43):
My father brought a little one home once. I called
him Luna because he was very sweet. We just fed
him milk. And then another child told the paper, my
father has captured three. It's nice because you have a
little animal at home. We bottle feed them because they
only drink milk. They have slipperies in you pour water
and they produce a kind of slime. You touch them
(18:03):
and it's like soap. Isn't that charming? That is charming
yet terrifying, because what happens if one of the bull
hippos sees a little school kid making off with their baby?
What happens if any kid, any human child, is around
an adult hippo. I would eat The risk are there.
(18:24):
It's not to quote a deep cut movie, but no,
that's a clear and present danger here with the Harrison Ford.
I believe so. I believe so if he really bored
me when I was a kid. I don't want to
bet the farm on it. I mainly remember that it
was it was right around that time he was doing
all those political thrillers, Like there was that one and
(18:44):
then there was the one where he's like, get off
my plane where he's like the president was that air
Force one was a force? But um, you know, there
are some potential solutions being discussed and they ranged for
them the yeah, okay, to the ridiculous, and this is
ridiculous history. So I guess we better, you know, maybe
(19:05):
start with the ridiculous. Should we go you know, backwards
ridiculous to more reasonable? Um, let's let's do pros and cons. Yeah,
I think that's smart. I think that's smart. So in
this BBC article that from the BBC World Service by
William Creamer Um, there is an interview with a gentleman
named David A Chevalret who is from He's like from
(19:26):
a local wildlife official from the area, and um, he
offers ideas ranging from building a reserve with you know,
proper hippo fences because obviously the original fences did not
do the job. Um, but he says it would you
know cost an excess of five grand. This is a
(19:46):
pretty poor area. That's not chump change. It's kind of
a big deal to deal with the remnants of the
opulent Escobars. Bizarre, you know, pretty selfish if we're being honest, lifestyle,
you know, not really thinking ahead here, Mr Escobar. So
pro it removes it removes this hippo population from the
(20:09):
local human population. Con it's expensive, and I get the
feeling that's just the entry price, not counting maintenance. Cohn
again in and since these hippos are already very well
known in the local and global arena, there would also
have to be paid dedicated staff to prevent people from
(20:32):
messing with the hippos. It's not a perfect thing. It's
not not a perfect proposal, but it's a you got
to do something right. The one of the things that's
not an option is doing nothing. They're aggressive, the territorial
they're breeding. I know there's you know another possibility where
(20:53):
we say, well, we have environmentalists working at the scene,
their charities were concerned. Why can they not simply transport
the hippos right to their giant It's hard, it's very expensive,
so costly, and we don't know how many there even are, right, Like,
there's like there's you know what, if they miss a
(21:14):
single male, then it's like game over. It's like, you know,
might as well, it's like starting over again. Might not
happen overnight, obviously, but before you know it, you're gonna
be back up to your your ears and hippos. And
even if we could, even if someone took upon themselves
the cost of transporting these massive animals to a a
(21:34):
native region, right, what they're going to find is that
there's a there's a very real likelihood that they could
transmit unfamiliar diseases to native hippos and then boom, we've
lost all of the hippos. Possibly that's not probable, but
it's possible. It's a very real concern. I know, I
promised to go from ridiculous to sensible, and I think
(21:56):
I I did not deliver on that. I think I
started with sensible. So let's let's do the opposite extreme. Um,
since since we we promised some ridiculousness. Um uh, since
you did? I did. You're right, You're right. I can
only speak for myself here. Another local wildlife authority suggested, Um,
you know, let's just kill them all. In barbecue them
(22:18):
and a feast on their flesh. That is that is
the quote. I think they should barbecue them and eat them,
says Patricio von Hildebrand, right. And apparently this came from
a situation where one of the hippo's was accidentally electrocuted
to death on a um poorly calibrated electric fence, shall
(22:40):
we say, And the locals came around, chopped up the
carcass and barbecue them. And apparently, um hippo tastes a
lot like pork, which makes sense considering their uh, pig
like appearance. Yeah, I would, personally, I would be hesitant
to eat it. And this is this is something that
comes up. Another biologist had said that this meat, regardless
(23:05):
of how you prepare it, may again have some sort
of unexpected disease, right, possibly something that could cause meningitis.
But there's another solution, or another proposed solution, and that's
the idea that we just get rid of all the males,
you know, like like Herod in the Bible. What we
were saying earlier, though, that's tricky because you know what
(23:28):
if one of them holds up somewhere they're on the lamb,
and uh, you know we miss one and then you
know it was a wasted effort, right, like you said,
square one or back to back to hippo zero zero.
And then there's the you know, the castration idea, which is,
you know, a little squeaky, but let's go into it. Okay. Sure,
(23:50):
So if we want to be humane, right then instead
of eliminating this breedy possibility by eliminating all the males,
we have kicked around the idea we as a species,
not just me, and yeah, that's just us. So we're
gonna handle the hippo problem, right add On, that's the
(24:12):
first thing you said to me this morning, right, Ben,
It's time to handle the hippo problem. You and I
are actually leaving after recording this to go to Columbia
for something different, but I think we'll we'll do the
hippo thing on the way. The problem is that hippo's,
aside from being big, aside from being aggressive, there's a
real danger if we try to conduct that kind of
(24:32):
neutering operation on them, right, we don't know when they'll
get back up. Yeah, because hippo's, as it turns out,
despite their massive stature, are pretty dainty and delicate when
it comes to chemicals, and in order to perform these procedures,
these creatures would have to be anesthetized and it could
(24:55):
potentially kill them, right, and this would end up, you
know that this would be a situation where with the
best of intentions, they just ended up killing all the
male hippos. The other problem here is that regionally a
lot of the locals have kind of taken this on.
(25:16):
Is a local mascot. I think they're proud of, you know.
And there was one hippo that was castrated, that was
successfully castrated, and people hated it. They were saying, oh,
why do you have to castrate this hippo? Just Steve. Yeah,
let Steve be castrate the politicians. That was the idea.
(25:37):
That's a really good bumper sticker. Lets Steve or castrate
politicians like in the whole split them up. Now me
two different ones, okay, because you know, depending on the car,
we gotta know where the stickers stickers. It's got a
new car today. By the way, no bumper stickers shall
graze this vehicle. Bumper sticker. Let us know how you
feel about bumper stickers. And as we end the episode today,
(26:02):
it's true the hippos are still out there and also
Ferrell camels in Australia. But there is a ray of
sunshine in the story, has a handful of rays. It's
pretty interesting story. Um. Nobody has been hurt or killed
by any of these hippos to date that we have
discovered and looking into this, so you know, maybe uh.
(26:24):
I think the biggest concern is probably the danger to
the ecosystem and you know, potentially a little kid getting
squashed because you know, he or she is trying to
take home a cute, cute, sweet, slippery, soapy baby hippo
calf uh. The World Wildlife Foundation does call the situation
a ticking time bomb because depending on their rate of reproduction,
(26:50):
if there is nothing done, then eventually, yes, it will
turn violent and innocent humans could could be harmed or killed. However,
there is an opportunity. I think there is an opportunity
to create some rays of sunshine from this. As you said,
you know what if there were a safe place right
(27:12):
where the hippo's will be guarded, allowed to live their
hippo lives hip behaven, I do. Let's let's have a
place like that where people can observe them from a
distance and help support you know, the associated cost, and
not accidentally find one in a river. You know, it's
(27:33):
it's sort of It reminds me of the idea of
the old question of what's the scariest thing to see
in the woods if you're camping sasquatch if you can
find one? Right the World Champions of Hide and Seek,
there's one of the answers is a bear cub because
the mother is somewhere totally and you don't know where.
(27:55):
Or sasquatchub or a sasquatch, a sasquab, sasquab. It's tough
to say, but it's worth it. It's a lot of fun. Um. Well,
I think yeah. Is that that? That does it for
Escobar and his his his hippo hare. Um. Yes, thus
ends our episode on Pablo Escobar's hippo Haven. That's better, Well,
(28:19):
the haven is coming, Yeah, hopefully the hippo Haven is
on the way. This does, not, however, end our show.
We'll be back very soon with something bizarre, something weird.
Something dare I say ridiculous, You don't have to. Well,
(28:40):
it's it's out there now. In the meantime, we'd love
to hear from you have you visited Colombia? Have you,
by any chance happened to see the hacienda yourself? And
also what was the one we asked earlier? What do
you think of bumper stickers? That's the burning question really
that we were left it today, that's my take away anyway.
(29:02):
But um, you can do all that stuff if you want.
You can email us at what are we Ridiculous at,
how Stuff Works dot com. That's us, and you can
find us at all the other various social media's. I
think in an earlier episode, if I recall correctly, we're
still speculating on a Pinterest. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not.
I'm not about that Pinterest life. Well, we'll put a
(29:23):
pin in that for now. I know they're not all
going to be great. They're not all giving you home runs,
so right as send us her thoughts, your dreams, your nightmares,
and you know, if you have an idea for an episode,
we'd love to hear that too, and we'll catch you
next time on Ridiculous History
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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