Habitat

The hippopotamus lives mainly in Africa, specifically the Sarhara, West and East Africa. They live in a variety of habitats, but mainly thrive in wetlands, rives and swamps. Due to having their eyes, ears and nose on top of their head, they can swim with most of their body submerged underwater. Hippopotamus' also have a clear membrane over their eyes which helps them see underwater. 

Social structure

Most large hippopotamus are found to congregate with groups of other hippos, which can be anywhere to 20 to 100 members with one territorial bull. Depending on the environmental condition of where the groups of hippos reside, a drought can cause disputes throughout the group. The oldest and the strongest males tend to assert dominance which lead to high levels of aggression. The pygmy hippo doesn't tend to be territorial, most of the time they ignore other pygmys' (Erena, 2022).

Hippos are primarily herbivores, but in certain cases they can be omnivorous which means they consume both plants and meat. During the night hours, hippos graze for approximately six hours each night and can eat up to 88 pounds of grass, and some fruit, within those six hours. Though they like to stay near water, sometimes they have to travel in order to find food to graze. In certain instances, hippos can travel 5 miles in one night while grazing. 

Though hippos eat grass and fruit most of the time, there has been some cases where they eat dead animal carcasses, which leads more towards an omnivorous diet. They even tend to attack and eat animals such as zebras and kudus (Clauss, 2004). Hippopotamus's only attack their animals when they are provoked or defending their babies. 

Hippopotamus' are traditionally herbivores, but occasionally can have an omnivorous diet. They are a continuous feeders where they spend most of their day in water and graze for food during the night. "Hippo lawns" are considered to be spots of grass that are kept short due to continuous grazing from the hippos. 

Due to hippoptamus's being nocturnal eaters, they spend most of their day in some form of water. Being submerged in water throughout most of the day helps them digest the food they ate the previous night. 

The common hippopotamus use their large back molars to chew and digest their food, their front teeth don't have any contribution to chewing and grazing their food. 

They have a multi-chambered stomach which allows the carbohydrates they consume to ferment and distributes energy throughout their body. Due to their multi-chamber stomach, these pseudo-ruminant animals can store two days worth of chewed grass at one time. Hippopotamus' have a very slow digestion rate and a low metabolic rate. This allows them to survive multiple weeks without food (Arman, 1973).

The amount of nutrients that is consumed, processed and released back into the rivers and lake from the hippopotamus's provides valuable nutrients for fish and other marine animals. 

Check out the video to learn more about pseudo-ruminant animals and their digestive anatomy function.