"It grabbed me and threw me two meters," he added. He slipped trying to get away and was bitten on the arm. John Aristides, 33, remembers very well that afternoon in October 2021 when he was fishing on the banks of a creek when a hippopotamus "lunged at me and hit me on the head with its lips". "While they may look very calm, at any moment, given their highly unpredictable behaviour, they can attack, as has happened before," he added. "There are about 35 children playing that could approach them and provoke a tragedy," said David Echeverri, an official from the local environment authority. This time, the uninvited guest chomped at some fruit trees before moving off into the adjacent fields.īut a bloat of hippos have set up home in a lake just 20 meters from the school. "The mothers get scared when they see an animal of that size," teacher Dunia Arango told AFP. Several months ago, one of the hippos burst into a school yard in Doradal with both pupils and parents present. However, in a town close to the city of Medellin, this legacy of the late drug baron Pablo Escobar, is increasingly posing a problem, and one that experts think may soon turn deadly. In their homeland in Africa, they are responsible for more human deaths than almost any other animal, but in Colombia, hippopotami have become loved members of the local community and a tourist attraction.
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