However, after happily splashing around for a while, the mammal found it could not get out of the pool and was well and truly stuck.
Luckily, a farm worker noticed water spilling over the side of the concrete container and spotted two enormous nostrils poking out of the tank.

Equipped with a hydraulic crane and a cage, hippo hunter Chris Hobkirk and his team from the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Association set to work. In a four-hour operation, they drained the tank and used poles to gently nudge the hippo into the 3m-long (10ft) steel cage before winching it to safety.

'Maybe we got lucky with this one. In the past, I have removed hippos from small dams. In those cases, the water levels have always been much lower so this was different.'
Although this hippo went to extreme lengths to cool down it is by nature a semi-aquatic animal.
They usually stay in water all day until stepping on to land at dusk to graze.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment