That Time the USA Tried to Make Hippo Farming a Thing

The BrainFood Show

Cloud10

History, Education

4.9 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you were to travel down the Rio Magdalena just north of the Columbian capital of Bogotá, you might just come across some rather out-of-place wildlife: a herd of African Hippopotamuses. The herd, which now numbers nearly 100, is descended from four individuals imported in the 1980s by notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, and kept in a private zoo on his estate in Puerto Triunfo. When Escobar was killed in 1993, the hippos escaped into the surrounding rivers and multiplied…and multiplied, and multiplied. The enormous invasive species then proceeded to wreak havoc on the local ecosystem, destroying local plant life, disrupting the habitat of native animals like crocodiles and manatees, and killing fish with copious amounts of noxious faeces. If left unchecked, biologists fear the population could reach 1,000 by 2035, causing untold environmental damage. But as bizarre as this environmental crisis might seem, the exact same scenario might very well have played out in the United States more than 100 years ago, thanks to one of the strangest bills in U.S. congressional history. This is the wild and unlikely story of how the U.S. government tried to introduce hippo ranching to America. Host: Simon Whistler Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just for we get back to today's episode, do you like feeling awake in the evil time of day known as morning?
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1:15.3	Thanks to AeroPress for sponsoring our show, and now let's get back to it.
1:19.9	Race the rudder.
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