A beautiful late 20th Century hippopotamus skull mounted on a wooden shield in exceptionally good order, complete with all tusks/teeth. Great interior design conversation piece.

The hippopotamus is considered to be very aggressive and has frequently been reported as charging and attacking boats. Small boats can be capsized by hippos and passengers can be injured or killed by the animals or drown. In one case in Niger, a boat was capsized by a hippo and 13 people were killed. As hippopotamuses will often engage in raiding nearby crops if the opportunity arises, humans may also come in conflict with them on these occasions, with potential for fatalities on both sides. 

Hippos reproduce fairly quickly so they need to be culled. In the late 1980s, Pablo Escobar kept four hippos in a private menagerie at his residence in Hacienda Napoles, 60 milles east of Medellin, Colombia, after buying them in New Orleans. They were deemed too difficult to seize and move after Escobar's death, and hence left on the untended estate. By 2007, the animals had multiplied to 16 and had taken to roaming the area for food in the nearby Magdalena River. In 2009, two adults and one calf escaped the herd and, after attacking humans and killing cattle, one of the adults (called "Pepe") was killed by hunters under authorization of the local authorities. As of early 2014, 40 hippos have been reported to exist in Puerto Triunfo, Antioquia from the original four belonging to Escobar. The National Geographic Channel produced a documentary about them titled Cocaine Hippos.

Condition: very good

Dimensions: 60cm wide, 45cm deep, 44cm high

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