Back from Africa Part 3 Hippos

Malawi has some of the largest concentrations of Hippo in Africa so it was not hard to stumble across these magnificent beasts ,although they can travel up to 15 miles in the dry season looking for food they are easy to locate during the day as they spend most of that in the water and can be found easily because of their roars. From a photographic point of view they pose their own kind of problems the biggest being is that they do they spend most of the daylight hours partly submerged and when approached in the boat dive out of site and can stay submerged for several minutes the size of them compared to the boat made this slightly unnerving as we all know what else lives in the water !!!

Occasionally during the day however the Hippo will come out to eat and will come and graze the banks of the river

As you can see from the battle scars on the fellow above they dont mind conflict but when spotted their main concern is to get back into the water as quickly as possible where they are king. It is unwise to get in their way as they return they can move remarkably quickly and make no attempt to avoid anything in their path with even the cows being the size of a rhino they can be twice as heavy weighing up to 4000 pounds which can make quite a splash

If the Hippo can not be bothered to move he thinks he has the right to roar show his teeth and stay put !!!!

Well thats alright with me !