Today I learned something new-- and serendipitously complementary to the book I finished yesterday: Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar kept (among other exotic animals) four hippos on his estate . . . and while the elephants and zebras and giraffes were relocated after his death, the hippos remained . . . and they bred; now there are more than one hundred hippos in the vicinity Escobar's property-- in the nearby lakes and rivers-- and they are big dangerous animals that also-- according to some folks-- cause some environmental destruction-- they defecate too much in the water, which can cause algal blooms; they eat too many of the aquatic plants which makes it harder to catch fish; and they are a menace to fishermen and those who swim in the lakes and river . . . but other folks like the hippos, whether because they are charismatic megafauna (and great for tourism) or because they might fill an ecological niche that has been vacant since humans came to the Americas and hunted and killed most of the large herbivorous mammals . . . listen to "The Debate About Pablo Escobar's Hippos" for more information on this ginormous issue.
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