Are there hippos in asia

The pygmy hippopotamus tends to prefer forest habitats with bodies of water. Since hippos are primarily confined to one type of environmental habitat, they face significant conservation challenges due to habitat loss.

Increased human population and development projects are encroaching upon traditional hippo territory. Not only does this growth destroy and reduce the number of aquatic habitats available to hippos, but it also prevents remaining hippo populations from accessing other bodies of water. In , it was estimated that only between , and , hippos existed, a statistic that prompted the International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN to list the hippopotamus as a vulnerable species.

In addition to habitat loss, the hippopotamus is also faced with illegal poaching. Hippo meat is considered a luxury food in central areas of Africa and is sold on the black market. Additionally, hippo teeth are often prized as a suitable alternative to ivory, which is also obtained illegally from elephant tusks.

The Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reported growth in its hippopotamus population in This organic matter is a now known to be a source of nutrition for a variety of river fish and aquatic insects — and represents a crucial flow of energy across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

This organic matter is found in species of fish and insects demonstrating these aquatic consumers absorb nutrients from hippo dung as part of their diet. The rate of absorption is highest during the dry season when the organic matter is more readily available as it is not as easily diluted by fast flowing waters. This demonstrates the importance of hippos in the aquatic food web, and the impact that their decline is likely to have on the overall health of the riverine environments in which they live.

Populations of the common hippopotamus have undergone widespread decline as a result of habitat conversion into farmland, hunting for bushmeat and, increasingly, for their ivory canine teeth. The hippo was once found all over central and southern Africa and around the Nile they were present right to the Mediterranean.

A result of this confusion is that the literature currently features both names for this animal. The oldest hippos. Hippos of the modern sort — crown-hippos — are not an especially ancient group.

The oldest fossil hippos of modern sort that is, of the clade Hippopotaminae within Hippopotamidae are from the Upper Miocene of eastern Africa. More archaic hippos that are outside the crown group do extend the record back somewhat further, however. Kenyapotamus is known from the middle and Upper Miocene of Kenya, Tunisia and Ethiopia, and two additional taxa — Morotochoerus from Uganda and Kulutherium from Kenya, both from the Lower Miocene — appear to be close relatives Orliac et al.

Morotochoerus was originally identified as an anthracothere and Kulutherium has also been regarded as a member of this group at times. All are classified together within the hippopotamid clade Kenyapotaminae. Hippos that is, hippopotamids are included within a more inclusive clade — Hippopotamoidea — that includes a set of Eocene and Oligocene taxa collected termed anthracotheres or anthracotheriids Lihoreau et al.

Anthracotheres take the history of the hippo lineage way back into the Paleogene. Narrow-muzzled hippos and other Miocene forms. Among hippopotamine hippos, a number of archaic species are classified together within Archaeopotamus.

And a problem with the concept of Archaeopotamus is that the species placed here differ substantially in size, proportions, and muzzle and jaw shape. Some like A. A substantial number of fossil hippos are known from the Miocene, and also from the Pliocene and Pleistocene too.

There are Asian taxa, like Hex. The best known of these animals is Hippopotamus gorgops , an extremely large east African hippo with orbits substantially elevated above the rest of the skull. The orbits of Hi. Substantially elevated orbits are present in several others, including Hex. Hexaprotodonts, not all of which are hexaprotodont.

So-called hexaprotodont hippos — typically classified together as Hexaprotodon — are so-named because several fossil species differ obviously from the Hippopotamus species in having six mandibular incisors, as opposed to four. They also tend to have shorter-crowned cheek teeth and a shallower mandibular symphysis than Hippopotamus species.

Grooved canines are also more typical of hexaprotodonts than other hippos. However, six mandibular incisors are not present across all hippos thought to be hexaprotodonts: some have four incisors and others only have two.

The living Pygmy hippo has four. Within the hexaprotodonts, a lineage where the third lower incisor is especially big is known from Ethiopia as well as India and Pakistan. The Asian species — Hex. These hippos also share a transversely narrow braincase and an exceptionally robust mandibular symphysis. They might have originated in Asia, their African representative Hex. Some hexaprotodont hippos are small relative to the Hippopotamus species. Several African species including Hex.

Indeed several authors have argued that the whole lot should be lumped together, in which case the name Hippopotamus wins priority. Other fossil hippos. Trilobophorus from Hadar in Ethiopia supposedly has a unique lacrimal region but is so far as I know of uncertain phylogenetic position.

Saotherium from Chad was named by Boisserie for a Lower Pliocene hippo from Chad with an elongate braincase and an inclined mandibular symphysis. It was originally described as a member of Hexaprotodon H. Hippos on islands. Hippos have been quite good at colonising islands and two cases of this are worth discussing. During the Miocene, the Mediterranean shrank and terrestrial animals of many sorts colonised the highlands that had previously been islands. The Mediterranean was later refilled, stranding those animals and meaning that they now became island endemics.

Hippos were among these animals, and several dwarf forms now evolved on Crete, Cyprus, Sicily, Malta and Sardinia. However, these odd features are best interpreted as novelties associated with small size and a strongly terrestrial life, and most experts regard them as deeply nested with Hippopotamus.

There are several species and the taxonomy is rather messy. The second case concerns Madagascar. Hippos of two and perhaps three species occurred on Madagascar during the Pleistocene and Holocene at least Stuenes