Hippo Meat Nearly Became an American Food Staple | Hacker News Reader

Hippo Meat Nearly Became an American Food Staple

ripleys.com

125 pointsnonethewiser168 comments

I can understand that this was glossed over somewhat to focus on the quirky and bizarre rather than the grim. But here:

> Bison had become nearly extinct

The use of the passive "had become" in the above is hiding a pretty important part of this story - the snippet below from http://www.ozarkbisons.com/aboutbison.php explains a bit more about what happened.

> But the fur trade and other commodities from the Bison is only a small part of the story. The American government encouraged elimination of the Plains Indians' primary food source, the bison. The idea was to kill off the Buffalo to starve the Indians, force them into relatively small areas, or north into Canada – make their food source either scarce or non-existent. The results would be starvation and high infant mortality amongst the Indian populations that would pave the way west for European settlement and the start of the western beef industry

So they didn't really just "become" nearly extinct, they were very deliberately eliminated in a sort of genocidal effort. Not saying people shouldn't enjoy the story (because it is interesting after all), I just think this additional context is worth knowing.

Now I'm imagining an alternate history where the Indians were forced into Canada, and came back years later riding war hippos.

I came for hippo burgers but left with hippo warriors

> an alternate history where the Indians ... came back years later riding war hippos.

You'd need more than an alternate history, actual hippos aren't that tractable.

What you’re saying isn’t false, but I guess I don’t understand what you’re suggesting. That this article should take some white guilt detour to delve into this topic?

I think most are growing weary of having content about how terrible white people are injected into every possible thing.

I don't think the Irish government did this, nor the Germans. And brown Americans' government did. You're the one bringing up white guilt here, and glossing over atrocities can be called out without any need for invoking the idea of racial guilt.

I explicitly said that I understood why they didn't include it - the article was meant to highlight the bizarre idea of hippo meat being introduced in the USA. I commented here because I just thought some HN'ers would like to know a bit more - and I said that too.

I'm not sure how else I could've worded my comment that wouldn't have triggered this kind of reaction :-/

Is it really "injecting" to simply be accurate? "Had become extinct" is technically correct. As much as, "Jews had become less populous during World War II."

Teaching real history is not "injecting".

Bison had become nearly extinct due to extreme overhunting by European settlers would be fine. And if pertinent, you could add more reasons for the extreme overhunting.

Why not just call genocide what it is -- genocide? Wouldn't it be far more accurate, and just as concise, to say "Bison had become nearly extinct due to genocide by European settlers"?

"Genocide" applied to the killing of animals would be a very unusual usage. Something like "extermination" would probably be more appropriate.

The genocide in question is that of the indigenous people, not of the Bison

If we're adding detail to the story because we think the reader might not be aware of why there weren't many bison left, I'm not sure:

> Bison had become nearly extinct due to genocide by European settlers

is going to help. Any reader who'd benefit from specifying why bison had been largely wiped out, probably won't connect the dots here, and will instead read that as genocide against bison. Readers who read "genocide" as referring to "genocide against indigenous people, part of which was eradication of bison" didn't need any of this called out to begin with.

I don't think it's right to hold a comment on HN to the same standards as a magazine article, though. It's entirely possible to write that sentence you had a problem with in a way that describes what happened without any confusion.

The purpose was to force them onto the reservation, not exterminate them.

See "Empire of the Summer Moon".

https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful...

An excellent read for anyone curious about the history of this.

I’m comfortable calling an extermination attempt the actions that would certainly destroy their culture and history and food supply and language.

I recommend getting the book if you have the remotest interest in the topic. It's only $3 on Amazon.

It's a great read, better than any novel.

Sure, I appreciate the recommendation. I’ve actually read a decent bit on the subject and having been born on an Indian Reservation and lived next door to them my entire adolescence (the impoverished kind, not the casinos-near-major-cities kind), participated in crown dances, etc it’s not all that alien to me.

Does this book explain how stealing children and sending them to boarding schools to be tortured, raped, murdered, and buried in unmarked mass graves is “not extermination” and is “an attempt to confine them” to the literal shittiest plots of land that settlers could locate on the continent?

I wouldn't want to spoil things for you! The Comanche were a lot like the Vikings. They were empire builders like the Vikings, and you wouldn't want to be their neighbor any more than you'd want to be a neighbor to the Vikings.

It's a great epic, and I don't know why somebody hasn't created an epic series about them. There have been a couple pathetic westerns about the Comanche, which are best ignored.

Check out the book. You won't be disappointed!

> I wouldn’t want to spoil things for you! The Comanche were a lot like the Vikings.

A myth based on mistaking an activity for an ethnicity?

???

Viking is a job title, not a people.

I don’t really understand the implicit argument you’re making here, could you just state it explicitly?

Is it that the Comanche were bad and therefore genocidal campaigns against them (and all other native tribes) were justified or somehow non-genocidal?

> The purpose was to force them onto the reservation, not exterminate them.

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part is genocide.[1]

[1] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

No it really isnt, that is the most common usage besides ww2 history.

Got a source? Webster's and Dictionary.com both list a single sense, and it's to do with peoples and cultures, not any living thing. I'm sure it's been used that way on occasion, but I'm quite confident that's not a common usage, and employing it for a general audience would tend not to be the best choice.

(as another poster noted, the extermination was part of a genocide, that's true, but it remains weird to describe extermination of animals as "genocide" in this kind of context, where we're evidently concerned that the reader might not be aware of why the bison were few in number—it's strange to imply we committed genocide against bison. That is definitely not a normal way to phrase that.)

I don’t read that as a cause for guilt as a white person. I wasn’t there and I wouldn’t currently support that kind of endeavour. I’d almost certainly speak up against it, and I don’t hesitate to speak up about injustices that are still occurring.

I read it as important history to take into account moving forward. There’s no need for guilt over a past you didn’t participate in. There is however a benefit from considering the past and how it affects the present, and an opportunity to be better for it. At no point does anyone need to feel guilty, though.

I found that omission distracting; it made me question the rest of the article, if this important piece of context was not included, you have to wonder what else wasn't included.

Yeah I think it could've easily been included (even just a sentence[0] and a link to something that explored it in a bit more detail maybe?) but I don't think there was any malice in its omission. Some people want to rewrite or whitewash history, but I don't think that was the case here.

[0] - update: user jjeaff included an example of the kind of sentence I meant here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35951313

I think most whitewashing of history comes out of the urge to avoid uncomfortable topics, rather than any malice. The topic of genocide, for example, opens a huge can of worms. It's much easier to keep that can of worms out of sight.

Plus, in the interest of storytelling, you often don't want to open up "threads" in a story that don't support the main plot.

I've noticed this is especially true for children's books. They have to have a happy ending. (I mean, who wants to read a kids book that leaves the kid depressed about history?) Of course, because of this, many kids grow up thinking that "problems" like racism are things that were solved in the past. And that's because those problems were solved in the books that have been read to them, or that they've read. (This is based on my experience reading many hundreds of books to my kids.)

Anyways, that's a bit of a tangent.

Honestly I'm with you on everything you have said in this thread. I was dancing around it because I didn't want to be too accusatory, but I might as well say that what I meant is that if someone's writing little "oo what if we were eating hippos" pieces and the like, I would understand if they didn't want to become a victim of targeted hatred from the weird MAGA guys who can easily get set off by smaller things like this. It may sound silly but they can be dedicated, persistent and creative so if someone figures "it's not worth it for the $x00 I'm getting" then fine.

Note: not accusing anyone in this thread of anything like that, it’s pretty cordial as far as I can tell even if I disagree with some

How deep do you take that though? The reason why bison were gone doesn’t change the fact that they were nearly were at the time and that the introduction of hippos were a replacement. If you need to have every side fact explained in detail, then you’re going to have an extremely long, probably book length discussion on any given topic.

I think “bison had become nearly extinct” is accurate enough to show why hippos as a meat source were even a topic of discussion

> How deep do you take that though?

The literal reason they were even thinking about importing hippos was because "bison had become nearly extinct." It's not exactly going "deep" to spend one or two sentences on why they'd gone extinct.

Without the genocide, this very likely wouldn't have happened. It's the direct cause, and not a "side fact." I'm confused why you would think otherwise.

I posted this article because it highlighted the interesting details about the plan the best, but others suggested meat monopolies were the actual reason. I dont think Bison were a staple prior to 1900 or anything.

If we want to talk about a glaring omission, its that.

>I dont think Bison were a staple prior to 1900 or anything.

You've been misinformed. Bison was the "was the principal food source for Indigenous Peoples of the Plains.[0]"

Indigenous people depended on bison for food; bison were slaughtered wholesale in order to make life as hard as possible for indigenous people to live. This was quite intentional, and extremely horrible. And yes, it sucks, and is uncomfortable to think about. Doesn't mean we should ignore it, though.

[0] http://traditionalanimalfoods.org/mammals/hoofed/page.aspx?i...

they are clearly talking about the US as a whole

and the collapse of bison population was multi-causal, attributing it all to an effort to get rid of native americans is frankly ahistorical.

Bison decline was already decidedly in the cards by the time colonizers started large-scale hunting of them, due to the introduction of the horse and the rifle among tribal communities (the popular depiction of plains native americans as long-term bison hunters is a western conjuration not based in reality). [0]

there is a tendency in pop (progressive) history journalism to use the fact that someone said something as evidence that this was the primary motivator for why people did the things they did. (see, for instance, the 1492 project).

[0]: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/06/09/what-role-did-native...

I think it was clearly just out of scope.

This reminds me of an English term that, to me as an ELL, sticks out like a sore thumb every time I see it: Landfill. It almost sounds like we're doing something admirable by filling the land where there's an emptiness rather than saying what it really is, a place where we dump our garbage waiting for it to decompose, creating a hostile environment for everyone and everything around.

Thats a good observation, I never thought of it like that. Im not sure where you are, but its also called a dump in the US.

Landfill is what the government calls them. The commonly used term is dump.

That's an interesting perspective, I hadn't ever broken the word down and thought about it like that! However from the perspective of a native speaker, I can't imagine anyone thinks there's anything admirable about a "landfill". It's possible that it's a euphemism preferred by the local authority or whoever has to handle the rubbish we generate, but really we all know what it is referring to.

They're called landfills because of the method used to dispose the garbage: digging out a trench, covering the garbage with dirt, and compacting it to prevent rodents [1]. The land is literally "filled in" with garbage.

Before that trash was either incinerated, which caused lots of air pollution, or just dumped in large piles that created all kinds of sanitation issues, especially in urban areas. As unsavory as it is to think about, landfills were an actual innovation in waste disposal that exploded in the post war boom, not just a euphemism for a dump.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresno_Municipal_Sanitary_Land...

It's still incinerated plenty of places, iirc Japan does it and I know that at least some of it here is: https://www.teplarny.cz/cs/spolecenska-odpovednost

> Využíváme spalování odpadu. V létě je spalovna hlavním zdrojem teplé vody pro město. Vyrábíme současně elektřinu.

~= "We are using incinerated waste. In summer the incinerator is the main source of hot water for the city. At the same time we're producing electricity."

They do have a couple of charging ports at the teplárny near me, but I don't know how much electricity they produce.

Yeah modern incineration is a totally different beast with flue gas cleaning systems [1].

Before wet scrubbers [2] and some other clean air technology reached mass production - largely in the 70s iirc, because of EPA & California Air Resources Board pressure on coal power plants - incineration was a much dirtier way of disposing of trash.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration#Flue-gas_cleaning

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_scrubber

Yes, it probably was a euphemism originally, but negative connotations catch up pretty fast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill

The collapse of bison population was multi-causal, attributing it all to an effort to get rid of native americans is frankly ahistorical.

The tendency to valorize Native Americans as somehow above material trends, not prone to waste, etc. etc. is a cultural invention of the latter 20th century and the counterculture movement.

[0]: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/06/09/what-role-did-native...

> The tendency to valorize Native Americans as somehow above material trends, not prone to waste, etc. etc. is a cultural invention of the latter 20th century and the counterculture movement.

Perceiving peoples living outside industrialized society (or whatever is perceived as locally modern) this way is definitely not an invention of the latter 20th century. The flip side to being "less civilized" is having access to ancient concepts and norms that are more "natural" and "wholistic", and Native Americans and others were absolutely described in this ostensibly positive light just as much as they were in a negative, derogatory light. All peoples have done this throughout time; pick any cultural group anywhere and at any time and you'll also find another group who were the objective of such perceptions and ideas.

If latter 20th century and 21st century leftist thinkers wonder how or why such reductive, dehumanizing thinking could become ingrained in a culture, or if they wonder if the people who promoted these reductive identities had ill or good intentions, they need only reflect upon their own narratives.

I feel like the issue of whether he left are the real racists (as you seem to be implying) or whether they infantilise indigineous people is a separate one

I didn't say the left are the real racists. Racism comes in many shapes and forms, some more obvious than others. (FWIW, I grew up one town away from an infamous "sundown town", where people didn't feel the need to use dog whistles, innuendo, or even bother justifying facially racist ideas and behaviors. I've seen what that sort of racism looks like, watched it morph, and haven't lost track of its whereabouts.) Contemporary criticisms by the left have many salient and important things to say. Separating the constructive criticisms from the intrinsic infirmities isn't easy, however. (Some people, like Tucker Carlson, are better at it than others, and use their skill to loathsome ends.) But one way to start is to identify the problematic threads which their proposed solutions actually share with the harmful dynamics they claim to address.

The left ultimately embraced identity politics because identities can be empowering, culturally and of course politically. But identities are fundamentally and necessarily reductive, from which derives both its empowering capacity, but also derives the ability to readily label people and easily attach presumptions about how certain groups of people behave or should be treated, and to do so systematically and comprehensively. Such labels may seem positive one day, but can easily--perhaps even invariably--evolve into negative stereotypes as culture shifts. Moreover, identities invite one group to project their beliefs about themselves onto other groups, so they can be just as if not more empowering to entrenched powers as they are to the disenfranchised.

Thus, for example, the classic example of the Noble Savage, where Europeans projected their own criticisms about their rapidly changing, industrializing societies onto native peoples in what at face value was often a positive light (and often sincerely intended by some as positive), but which nonetheless furthered deeply harmful stereotypes and presumptions about the cultural, political, and moral capacity of those groups and individuals. The parallels between Noble Savage narratives and today are crystal clear, IMO. It's how you get leftist defenses of "colored people's time" and similar stereotypes (e.g. as in the infamous Smithsonian Poster[1]) as testifying to a true and inherent trait of some racial groups; it can be understood as a positive trait by upper middle class professionals who bemoan the stressful demands of their occupations and wish for a more "relaxed" culture, but that positively bent characterization is fleeting, and its fundamentally controlled by the professional class and subject to their whims, not the disenfranchised to whom it may be intended to defend.

[1] See "Future Orientation" and "Time" at https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc..., via http://web.archive.org/web/20200716005515/https://nmaahc.si....

> The tendency to valorize Native Americans as somehow above material trends, not prone to waste, etc. etc. is a cultural invention of the latter 20th century and the counterculture movement.

It is hard to see why this is relevant to bring up except as a way of excusing the historical incident at hand.

> excusing the historical incident at hand.

If the 'historical incident' is the extinction of the bison, then I bring it up because it is directly relevant to our views on the extinction of the bison?

The post you’re replying to attributes the dwindling bison population to a real, documented effort to starve Amerindians and your response is to say there were other causes besides that and anyway the Indians had their own problems. Both claims may be true but I don’t see what it changes.

> dwindling bison population to a real, documented effort to starve Amerindians

It's a discussion about the cause of bison elimination and I am discussing large proximate causes of bison death in the 19th century. Not sure why this is out of left field for you.

Because I think that even if they had the wind at their backs, so to speak, and don’t deserve full “credit,” your post reads like an attempt to minimize what would otherwise read as a shocking act of violence, especially with a coda that seems to serve no real purpose but to denigrate the victims of it.

> especially with a coda that seems to serve no real purpose but to denigrate the victims of it.

I'm not denigrating Native Americans by rejecting the racist trope that they were too simplistic and culturally at peace with nature to ever destabilize the environment they were in.

I think there is a big gulf between how we are interpreting this thread that I can't bridge. European colonization of the Americas was marked by many, many acts of horrific violence, regardless of whether they were the sole cause of bison extinction.

Even divorced from the context of the discussion the claim strikes me as untrue: “noble savages” go back centuries earlier than the 20th Century counterculture.

Fair enough. Perhaps, a popular revival with a focus on waste and environment under the counterculture might be more accurate, but perhaps even then it is still not very accurate given the long history of the concept.

Great link - deeply cited, nuanced, logical and relevant. Hadn’t encountered this publication before, will see what else they have to offer.

FYI, this a bad idea because Hippos are not cute placid animals. They are deadly dangerous. They may be herbivorous, but a Hippo is two tons of bad-tempered "aggressive and territorial" bastard, and they can move faster than you can, on land or in the water.

"the hippopotamus is the world's deadliest large land mammal, killing an estimated 500 people per year

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36320744

> "the hippopotamus is the world's deadliest large land mammal, killing an estimated 500 people per year”

ah yes, the humble hippopotamus, my favorite LLM (sorry llamas!) :)

They rejected the RLHF, no doubt

reinforcement learning from human fatalities

This would have been a pretty bad AI (animal invasion).

Technically speaking , arnt humans the most dangerous land mammal ?

"large land mammal"

I think humans fit that description, though.

Talkin'bout mud flaps, my hippo's got'em.

Yes, but you can't eat them, silly. (All kidding aside, I hear hippo taste like chicken.)

> the hippopotamus is the world's deadliest large land mammal, killing an estimated 500 people per year

I'm pretty sure that excessive consumption of beef and pork kills a lot more than 500 people per year.

The largest and strongest animals are herbivores and yet people are obsessed with eating flesh because “protein”, lol

You should eat only grass for a year and report back how you feel about this.

Does wheat-based cereal count?

Hippos have to graze up to 16 hours a day. Meat is a shortcut that enabled our species to put time into other things that made us the dominant species on the planet.

So is wheat/gluten.

Herbivores have digestive tracks that are better at breaking down plant matter than ours [1]. They also spend far more time eating [2]. Obviously these are not huge problems these days, since we can grow plants that give us more protein and calories, while being easier to digest. But to say "hippo get strong from eating plant, you get strong from eating plant" is pretty silly. If you spend 5-6 hours a day eating grass like a hippo, you will die from starvation.

1. https://stluciasouthafrica.com/hippo-facts/hippo-digestive-s...

2. https://ielc.libguides.com/sdzg/factsheets/hippopotamus/diet....

I don't have a rumen or an abomasum.

If you want to be large and strong, the science is irrefutable... eating meat is essential. Nothing substitutes.

How is it possible that meat is "essential" for size or strength, when there are plenty of professional athletes who eat vegan?

This guy weighs 263 pounds, squats > 650, and eats vegan. https://www.openpowerlifting.org/u/ryanjstills

Vegan athletes are a rounding error, and most suppliment with things you would not typically consider vegan, much less nagural.

The claim is that meat is "essential" to become big and strong. Which nutrients in meat are "essential" for this but not in a vegan's diet, so that they have to fill the gap with supplements to be competitive in sports?

For what one anecdote is worth, I'm friends with a former professional athlete who tried a vegan diet after after retiring - and years on he is still as freakishly strong and agile as ever. Many well-known pro athletes have gone vegan during their careers as well: Chris Paul, Venus Williams, Carl Lewis, among others.

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/yes-can-vegetarian-athlet...

https://www.gq.com/story/real-life-diet-chris-paul

How is it possible that it's essential, when a 22 yr old juicing to the gills can look like a bodybuilder carved out of marble?

Well, when you're not a 1-in-a-million athlete. That's how it's possible.

Who are you talking about? What juiced-to-the-gills 22 year old?

More importantly, what's the science backing your claim that eating meat is essential to becoming big and strong?

Yes, that's right, those large and strong herbivores are a great source of protein.

I'm pretty sure that excessive consumption of sugar kills a lot more than 5 million people per year.

How is this relevant?

Presumably a few generations of selective breeding could get us some nice docile hippos

Hey, pigs can be very dangerous too.. many a lad has been treed in rural America in decades past by a herd of feral hogs.. go read the book Old yeller or even watch the movie if books are not your thing

"""Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hippos that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?"""

A big gun, .40 calibre or more, elephant gun if you have it. Aim for the brain.

If your kids are in the way, it would be very hard to get there in time.

https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-use-to-take-down-a-hippo...

https://www.discountafricanhunts.com/africananimals/hippo.ht...

I'm assuming you mean pigs, not hippos.

My understanding (and you'll have to check your local laws) is that there is no "hunting season" for wild pigs because they are considered a pest species and thus they can be culled at anytime, with no restriction on type of weapon.

So basically, this is one case where an AR-15 would actually be a decent weapon for civilian use. Most places won't let you use a high-capacity, auto-loading rifle for hunting, but wild-pig-pest-control isn't hunting.

On the other hand, AR-15s are kinda 'spensive, so an AK-47 pattern rifle in 7.62x39mm might be a better choice (and surplus ammo is plentiful). The AK-74 pattern rifles in 5.45x39mm that I've seen have tended to be almost as expensive as a "cheap" AR-15, so at that point I don't know why you wouldn't just get an AR-15 for the more common ammo type.

If price is especially a problem, then a Hi Point carbine in 40S&W or 45ACP won't break the bank and should have enough stopping power. Plus, they usually come with some cheap optics that are more than adequate for the effective range of the rifle, which basically makes the thing almost as easy to shoot as a video game. But they are quite, erhm, ugly (mushy trigger pull, bad ergonomics), so if you can swing a more expensive rifle, that'd be preferable.

Imma let you finish but 30-50 feral hogs is a meme. See sibling comment.

Hrm. Well, I guess I "touch grass" too often to have run across that one before.

While that used to be true, AK-47/AK-74/etc. types of rifles are typically multiple times more expensive than AR-15s these days.

Whoa, yeah, just checked. AR-15 prices have really crashed. Glad I talked my dad out of using them as an "investment".

Investment quality ars are still holding value fine. The cheap ar rifles are... well, cheaply made. Not my favorite feature of a firearm that rests next to your face while use.

For the uninitiated:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/30-50-feral-hogs

I love that a few people familiar with guns and hunting here just went into a clinical analysis of the feasibility of killing 50 hippos in your yard

A good SRE doesn't only prepare for the obvious failure modes, but also considers other possible avenues (especially since if it works for 50 hippos it will probably help against 50 elephants, maybe).

Rural Americans have a .30-06 (or similar rifle) and know how to use it, and they often have access to more powerful guns. The question is can you hit a moving target without hitting the kids in the yard - unlikely no matter how much you train.

.30 caliber is a little light for this job, but it will work if you aim well. Generally you would want a more powerful gun.

Placement takes precedence over caliber size.

I don't think that still holds true at the extremes. These extremes include

1) very small calibre

2) high stress situation where quick reaction is needed, very precise placement such as the eye is nigh impossible. "head" is a good as you'll realistically get.

3) very large animal with a thick skull.

"charging Hippo" is 2 & 3.

> How do I kill the 30-50 feral hippos that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?

1. This[1] page suggests:

> The minimum suggested caliber for hunting hippo is a 375 and up, using solid bullets.

I assume that means .375 H&H magnum.

If you're actually going to try to kill Hippos, you're going to want to study their anatomy carefully. From what I understand, most hunters take headshots because Hippos are typically mostly submerged. But for most large game, a heart shot is seen as less risky since the brain is surprisingly small and well protected, which is an option unless your yard is deeply submurged.

2. 30-50 is almost certainly impossible in 3-5 minutes. Even with extensive practice.

Almost all rifles that shoot such high powered ammunition have an integral magazine, which means you'd have to load each bullet individually. And shooting that many targets at speed virtually guarantees that you'll miss their vitals somewhat regularly.

Also, 40-80 rounds of .375 H&H magnum would be extremely physically punishing to shoot.

---

1. https://somerbysafaris.com/species/hunting-hippo-in-south-af...

> From what I understand, most hunters take headshots because Hippos are typically mostly submerged.

If it's active defence against a Hippo charging at you, "running into your yard" then the Hippo is not mostly submerged.

If you need to clear the swamp of those pesky Hippos before they kill again, then sure.

I know that the intention is somewhat humorous here, but...

A lot of caliber recommendations out there are significant overkill, based on limited data. In cases where we do have data, calibers signicantly less powerful than recommendations often prove surprisingly effective.

For example, in a survey of 104 grizzly and polar bear attacks with handgun calibers, there were only 3 failures, all of which involved firing after the bear had already caused damage (an automatic failure) or completely missing[1]. You'll often see guys carrying 44 magnums in grizzly country, but the evidence seems to suggest that common 9mm rounds are effective enough. Even the lowly 22 rimfire is represented in the data with success against black bears (but not polar bears). I don't know anyone who would recommend 22 rimfire for deer let alone bears.

Given this, I think it's reasonable to select the venerable 7.62x39. This is a common chambering for semi-automatic and even automatic rifles with high-capacity magazines, which would obviate the need to load each bullet individually. It also is easy to obtain armor-piercing rounds in this caliber if penetration is your concern. This is still a punishing round to fire a lot of, but with a modern recoil management system it's manageable.

Additionally, the heart is a small target as well, but luckily most hunters' experience is that larger target including the lung and liver can provide reasonably ethical kills (i.e. the animal dies quickly without a prolonged tracking during which the animal suffers). For most animals striking the scapula proves disabling, allowing for an easier follow-up. So just aiming slightly forward of center of mass should be sufficient--no detailed knowledge of anatomy or high-speed, high-precision shooting needed.

All this is to say that with a different approach, killing what can only be described as a stampede of 30-50 hippos in 3-5 minutes isn't as implausible as a more conservative approach might make it seem.

[1] https://www.ammoland.com/2021/06/handgun-or-pistol-against-b...

If they're charging at you, it seems most effective to aim for the brain, that's the target (1). I would prefer the armour-piercing rounds, to get through the thick skull.

At that angle, the other vital organs are also well-shielded, by bulk if not by skull.

1) https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/hippopotamus-running-in-th...

If you're hunting in the African bush (not the scenario described, I know) I'd want to carry the largest possible caliber. These animals are big and fast - you get one shot if you are lucky.

There are also other animals that share an environment with the hippo that are very well-armoured and hard to kill with one shot, like elephants, Cape buffalo, etc.

The caliber stuff isn't about the "bear" minimum, it's about overkill because it not working can be an issue.

Reference that Tokyo Joe article posted here a few days ago where the dude took some number of .22 shells direct to the skull and lived.

I have read that too high powered a rifle can also be an issue, as the bullet just punches through the animal leaving a small entry wound and a relatively small exit wound, allowing the animal some significant time before it bleeds out.

> I have read that too high powered a rifle can also be an issue, as the bullet just punches through the animal leaving a small entry wound and a relatively small exit wound, allowing the animal some significant time before it bleeds out.

It's not.

"Solid bullet" typically means hard cast lead; it's a non-deforming bullet. The name of the game when it comes to the "big 5" is penetration. If you hit the brain or heart, it's dead quickly. If not, it'll probably shrug off the wound.

These are animals that fight lions and crocodiles, not to mention other hippos. Their bodies can take pretty massive damage (compared to humans anyhow) and just keep trucking.

To be fair most game hunting is (at least arguably) for meat or trophy, weaponry that completely turns your hippo into a thin red mist works for hippo control but is hard to mount on your wall, so your CSAM would probably work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heLuUd0VK2s

> You'll often see guys carrying 44 magnums in grizzly country, but the evidence seems to suggest that common 9mm rounds are effective enough. Even the lowly 22 rimfire is represented in the data with success against black bears (but not polar bears). I don't know anyone who would recommend 22 rimfire for deer let alone bears.

> Given this, I think it's reasonable to select the venerable 7.62x39. This is a common chambering for semi-automatic and even automatic rifles with high-capacity magazines, which would obviate the need to load each bullet individually. It also is easy to obtain armor-piercing rounds in this caliber if penetration is your concern. This is still a punishing round to fire a lot of, but with a modern recoil management system it's manageable.

So, the .308 is extremely common in the US and is somewhat similar to the 7.62x39. A .308 fires a typical round with, oh about 2500 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. Meanwhile a 44mag has maybe 1000 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. An Ak-47 is also 7.62x39 and has ~ 1500 ft-lbs of energy. That's a hell of a lot more grunt than a 44 magnum, any way you dice it.

At that point, skip the armor-piercing or FMJ and go hollow point. There's more than enough power in that round and the larger wound channel is probably a plus.

Yeah, 30-50 feral hippos in 3-5 minutes is well past "man portable weapon" territory. You're going to need a 40mm autocannon. Preferably on an Apache

Minor point here "feral" as in "feral pigs" means "of domesticated ancestry, but reverted to a mostly wild state".

This does not apply to hippos since they have never been domesticated at all, and those commenters suggesting that "just domesticate the hippos" would be a feasible task are IMHO very much underestimating something that they know nothing about.

Clearly the answer is a personal Predator drone fleet carrying hellfire missiles. As is my God-given right to own and use as a red-blooded American.

Would you rather fight 10 pig sized hippos or one hippo sized pig?

Or choice #3 - 4 hungry hippos!

Which is why “nearly became a food staple” is not a very honest headline.

Nobody would have succeeded at this endeavor, so the idea that this “almost” happened is ludicrous.

You might as well say that Star Trek almost invented warp drive.

Mankind has transformed deadly predators (wolves) into routine companions (dogs); and over centuries created multiple species specifically for food consumption (many plants, but also modern cows, sheep, etc.). I think hippos would have been possible; albeit probably not desirable.

I think there are many theories that say that the dog had some say in the matter of being domesticated. Could have actually been there idea to start!

It’s a wonder how few truly domesticated animals there are which may lead one to believe that it’s not so easy or natural. I guess we could give each hippo a lobotomy but that really wouldn’t go over well with the PETA crowd and I’m not shy to say I’d probably side with them on this matter.

That's true, though none of the aforementioned animals need to live inside a body of water.

Un-castrated bulls are also deadly dangerous. We just have a lot of infrastructure around keeping them away from people (and minimizing the number that remain intact).

> Un-castrated bulls are also deadly dangerous.

Yes, but nowhere near as dangerous or as aggressive as hippos are.

Cows are domesticated. There's a reason that all attempts to domesticate hippos have failed.

Dairy bulls are the worst. It might be wrong to say that they are effectively domesticated... the genes for high milk production are tangled up with those for aggressiveness (I hesitate here, "hostility" might be a better word) in males.

Cattle are equally, if not more, dangerous, and also kill over 500 people a year in the US

> Cattle are equally, if not more, dangerous, and also kill over 500 people a year in the US

According to the CDC, it's closer to 25/year[0] (108 over 4 years). And that's just raw totals, not accounting for populations size or the relative likelihood of encounters.

People underestimate how dangerous cows are, but hippos are way more aggressive and dangerous.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5829a2.htm

Also I've seen cows alongside the road many times (as required by international law, you have to moo at them) - but I've never seen a hippo except in a zoo.

There are a little over 100,000 hippos in the world and almost 100 million cattle in the USA, so on a per capita basis it's not even close! My grandfather raised cattle in Texas and we had to be aware at times, but the level of caution was nowhere near the extent needed when my brother and friends went fishing for giwan ruwa ("river elephant" aka Nile perch) in a remote part of Nigeria, because hippos were nearby! And when my friends took a 3-day canoe trip down the Zambezi River, the guides were vigilant about hippos more than anything else, because they are very aggressive when they feel threatened and they can bite a crocodile in half. Cattle are domesticated animals, but hippos are wild!

True, but comparing a domesticated animal in a feed lot to wild animals doesn't really track.

Comparing hippo deaths in captive populations, like in zoos, ate more comparable to domesticated farm animals.

So it'd be just like herds of cattle except all of them with the gentle demeanor of uncut bulls in close proximity to other uncut bulls.

Eeeeeeasy! For someone else to do.

> the hippopotamus

Jesus Christ, they should find that hippo and take the fucker out before it kills us all.

An excellent long-read of this topic can be found at https://magazine.atavist.com/american-hippopotamus/.

It's one of my favorite pieces of online journalism and goes deep into the unique lives involved and prevailing culture of the team.

Ha, I came here to link the same article. It's really fantastic.

Thanks you for sharing this. The ripleys article highlighted some interesting points so I chose that, but I was hoping to find a better account. Like the one you shared.

How can it be a good article if the word “bison” cant even be found in it?

My company uses something called Menlo Security to police our web access. It blocks this page:

> Menlo Security

> Request Blocked

> This website or download request has been blocked. The request is classified as: Hate and Racism

I have come across a few pages blocked in this way, and none of them were hateful or racist. It's not at all clear to me how they make that decision. It's mildly concerning.

There's a fun pair of alternate history novellas based on this: https://publishing.tor.com/americanhippo-sarahgailey/9781250...

Clicked into this thread to ensure their work was mentioned!

Those stories are fun.

What a great story!

> The New York Times coined the phrase “lake cow bacon,”

Seems like a wasted opportunity not to go for the portmanteau and call it Lakon

The Lakon Type-10 Defender: Built like a steakhouse, handles like a bistro.

(this is a requisite greeting among enthusiasts of the game the parent comment is referencing - elite dangerous. Captains salute each other upon a random meeting in the millions and millions of space stations in the galaxy.)

This is a Futurama reference, no?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uFNN5Qf2AR4

Looks like a combo reference.

I think this was first used in EVE online but I could be wrong

Futurama. This is clearly the work of the greatest poet yet to be born, Zapp Brannigan!

I remember this from EVE online vividly. Sometime around 2004-2006 I believe

There's no reason to think this would have worked. To quote Jared Diamond, only 14 of 148 large herbivorous mammals have ever been domesticated because they need very specific traits to be domesticable - pleasant disposition being one of them that hippos lack.

Is there any evidence that humans have ever succeeded in domesticating hippos?

Domesticated? They planned on releasing them in Lousiana.

Which — to be clear — would be WAY worse!

The most interesting detail of this story IMO is that they may have been released into the Louisiana bayou. Imagine these creatures wild in the swamps!

Probably a bit like this: https://www.dw.com/en/colombia-pablo-escobars-hippo-populati...

> Since Pepe, authorities have been trying, unsuccessfully, to limit hippos' numbers by chemically sterilizing them or castrating them. This is a hard task given their immense size, aggression and internal testicles.

They are killers. BAD idea.

I feel like that’s the perfect climate and temperature for the hippos to thrive, they love the heat. I believe hippos were accidentally introduced into Columbia and took over some of the places because of the perfect climate conditions.

I dunno. No one has brought up the question of whether hippo meat is tasty or not. If it were tasty then Louisianans would cook 'em up and eat 'em!

Anyone tried a hippo burger? How much meat on a hippo? How much fat? Is the fat tasty? Is hippo leather useful?

"Nearly" seems to be a big stretch.. journalists assuming 99% of the work is the idea and getting it cleared from a regulatory perspective.

Implementation is always so much harder once you have to actually do it then when you just have to talk about it or write articles about it.

Even post-implementation, even in a poorer era, dietary preferences are sticky. There are fads in farming, for instance my distant family got into the emu hype of the late 90s and lost a decent chunk of money because there was only a small specialty market that never grew. There's also been bison and alpacas.

It’s easy you just pick the right framework, then domesticate the hippos, then monetize hippos as a monthly service.

It's surprising that the most obvious question hasn't been answered. So what does Hippo meat taste like?

The taste is mild, less than lamb and more than beef, slightly more marbled than usual venison.

Came here wondering exactly this.

Meanwhile in Floria:

I Cooked A Whole Alligator ft. Guga - Joshua Weissman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v__SIw48G-I

Anyone watching Mrs. Davis on Peacock? The Resistance lives in an old Hippo Meat Factory known as the Hippo Campus.

This is fascinating, because the current TV show _Mrs. Davis_ has references to hippo meat which I think really cements that it's a parallel universe.

Makes me think of that Bong Joon Ho movie, Okja!

Sounds a bit like Okja!

Our meat Staples here in America are very unhealthy.. we really should be aqua farming cetaceans and walruses and seals and stuff. Loaded with healthy fats... Eskimos eat pure meat and fat from these animals and they never get heart disease.. something to think about..... PostScript... Some would say we should not aquafarm cetaceans, but surely there are dumb cetaceans...

Different human ethnic groups have different dietary needs. Eating like a traditional Inuit would not go as well for, say, a Frankish man.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/europeans-evolved-to...

> Eskimos eat pure meat and fat from these animals and they never get heart disease..

That is probably more of a myth than anything [0].

"The evidence for a low mortality from IHD among the Inuit is fragile and rests on unreliable mortality statistics. Mortality from stroke, however, is higher among the Inuit than among other western populations."

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12535749/

The Eskimos surviving after thousands of years in the arctic have evolved to thrive with the available diet.

That very likely does not apply to the rest of us.

There's no evolutionary pressure to not die from a stroke at 50 because you subsist on that sort of diet. Rates of stroke mortality are higher among Alaskan natives than other US ethnic groups, for example[1].

[1] https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2008...

I don't think they're eating that diet anymore.

It seems like AN males used to have lower death rates from IVD than white males in the US, but as those rates dropped for white males they stayed the same for AN males.[1] This study is from a period where the AN male population over ~40 was still primarily eating a traditional diet. SO it seems like the traditional diet was better than mainstream diets from the 80s and 90s, but probably worse than a good diet today if I may extrapolate a bit.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3402/ijch.v62i4.17579

Eskimos also would have no access to a good source of sugar, so attributing everything to a different type of meat is very myopic.

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