How Pablo Escobar’s ‘cocaine hippos’ became a biodiversity nightmare
Today in Focus
The Guardian
4.6 • 5.9K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Guardian. |
| 0:10.1 | Today, Columbia struggles with a big, very big question. |
| 0:14.8 | What do you do with Pablo Escobar's Out of Control Hippos? |
| 0:18.5 | So, Gina, tell me, how exactly do you go about castrating a hippo? |
| 0:29.6 | So, castrated a hippo is the most difficult thing you can ever do. |
| 0:39.6 | This is Dr. Gina Serna. |
| 0:41.4 | She's a wildlife vet from Medi-Edit in Columbia. |
| 0:44.2 | And you could say hers is near average day job. |
| 0:49.9 | First of all, we have to make a plan to capture the hippo. |
| 0:56.8 | The biggest one is like three, three and a half tons. |
| 1:00.3 | Wow. |
| 1:01.1 | There's so big and so compact with big teeth, so it's really scary |
| 1:08.0 | because they are absolutely dangerous. |
| 1:15.2 | These animals are enormous, like a big fridge on four squat legs, |
| 1:19.9 | but they can move surprisingly fast. |
| 1:22.8 | Their top speed is 30 miles an hour. |
| 1:25.5 | That's faster than you say in Bolt. |
| 1:28.0 | Gina sterilizes them in the wild. |
| 1:30.3 | It takes a team of at least 10 people. |
| 1:32.7 | First, to find them. |
| 1:34.6 | And then we have to shoot them with these doors |
| 1:38.2 | that have the anesthesia doses. |
... |
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