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This is Scientific Americans' 60-second Science. I'm Jason Goldman.

Around 115 miles east of Medellin in Colombia, sits the enormous hacienda built by the drug lord

Pablo Escobar, who had his own personal zoo, which included hippos. When Escobar's empire fell,

most of the exotic animals were safely relocated, except for the hippos who eventually escaped. So he brought four from a zoo in the

U.S. to Colombia, and they lived at his ranch, and they've grown slowly but steadily.

Jonathan Schurran, ecologist from the University of California in San Diego.

The original population of four in 1981 is estimated to be at least 80 now.

Hippos have a tremendous influence on their native ecosystems in Africa.

So Schurin wanted to see how they might be affecting their new ecosystem in

Columbia. You know, it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that hippos poop in the water in South

America just as they do in Africa. Hippos on both continents, wallow in ponds and lakes, where their

droppings release a tremendous amount of nutrients into the water. That imported material stimulates photosynthesis

of algae and aquatic plants and also microbial bacterial production of bacteria that are

living off of the organic matter that's imported. And that's where the hippos can cause

ecological trouble. If there is too much photosynthesis occurring, then the water becomes full of oxygen during

the daytime. But at night, when the sun goes down and the plants and algae stop releasing oxygen

into the water, a phenomenon called eutrophication occurs. All the creatures that consume oxygen

...