Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 9/11

[SVPete]

The Drug Lord Died. The Hippos Multiplied.

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2026/09/10/the-drug-lord-died-the-hippos-multiplied-n4956940

Pablo Escobar has been dead for more than three decades, but one part of his private zoo apparently never got the memo. Four hippos were brought to Hacienda Nápoles in the 1980s, one male and three females.

From Nature.com:

The introduction of hippos into the wild in Colombia has been marked by their rapid population growth and widespread dispersal on the landscape, high financial costs of management, and conflicting social perspectives on their management and fate. Here we use population projection models to investigate the effectiveness and cost of management options under consideration for controlling introduced hippos.

We estimate there are 91 hippos in the middle Magdalena River basin, Colombia, and the hippo population is growing at an estimated rate of 9.6% per year. At this rate, there will be 230 hippos by 2032 and over 1,000 by 2050.

Escobar died in 1993, but the hippos stayed, and then they got busy.

Colombia now estimates the population has passed 200. Without strong control measures, officials project roughly 500 hippos by 2030 and close to 1,000 by 2035.