Hippopotomology (HIPPOS) with Rebecca Lewison
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Oh, hey, it's the fish soup that you spilled all over the kitchen, which actually did happen to me, Hallie Ward. And this is Ologies. It's a podcast where we explore an ology a week. So you are tuning into a chat about hippos. It will leave you changed. It changed me. We've got a true hippopotamologist, a professor of biology at San Diego State University, whose research at Vassar and UC Davis focused on vulnerable wildlife populations and conservation and, of course... Hippos. So they know way more about hippos than most people ever will on the planet. And they're in a very elite club of hippopotamologists. And I asked her all of my very not smart questions as well as yours. If you want to submit a question ahead of time before we record... You can become a patron at patreon.com slash ologies. It costs about 25 cents an episode to join. It helps fund the show.
You can also buy ologies merch at ologiesmerch.com or you can support for no dollars by leaving us a review, which helps convince me that I'm not broadcasting to an assortment of dolls in a basement. And I read all your reviews, such as this one from Chris F., who writes, Hippos, hippos. You might know, you probably know that hippopotamus in Latin, it means river horse. If you didn't know that, I'm going to give you a second. It's hippo means horse, potamus means of the river, hippopotamus, river horse, these beasts. They are artidactyls, meaning that they have an even number of toes, like a bison or a deer and a giraffe. Those are all in artidactyls. And after elephants and rhinos, hippos are the largest land mammal, even though the common hippo's scientific name is hippopotamus amphibius. Terrestrial animal? We'll get into it.
So point your weird little ears our way to learn about knife teeth, blood sweat, swamp hippos, pet hippos, subspecies, their daily diet, the current state of hippo conservation, the absolute chaotic affection we have for Mudang. How many people hippos kill a year for real? If you need to apologize to a hippo. Who are hippos' best friends? Their role as ecosystem engineers. If you have ever been brainwashed about a hippo, what's up with their nostrils? How to keep a hippo in your pocket? And tips on flattering your friends into planning a group vacation. With conservation biologist, professor, and actual real-life hippopotamologist, Dr. Rebecca Lewison.
Rebecca Lewis in She, Her.
Thank you so much for doing this. As someone who studies hippos, this is a busy time of life for you, and we will get to why. How long have hippos been part of your bread and butter?
I started studying hippos as a graduate student. I was at UC Davis doing my PhD in ecology, and I kind of stumbled into this project to work on hippos. My interest in was to study behavioral ecology. At the time, I just really loved, it was fascinated by sort of the minutia of animal behavior. And I thought, oh, this will be perfect. I'll study hippos, which anyone who actually studies behavior will be laughing when they hear this because you think like, no, no, no, no. You study behavior on small things like birds or squirrels, not hippos.
Not her. She dedicated her research to a notoriously challenging terrestrial species. What the hell happened?
But I had this opportunity because I had spent time in Kenya as an undergrad and so could speak some Swahili and had traveled around and just had a fair amount of field experience. And so I got this amazing opportunity and kind of just fell into it and didn't realize what I was getting into at the time and sort of entering this amazing world of this understudied animal.
So it might be easier to see the behavior of spiders if they're living in the lab and stuff. Exactly.
You can't study it in the lab. You can't manipulate it at all. They're actually really hard to study, period, because they spend almost all their time in the water. You couldn't pick something less studyable if you tried.
You know, pop culturally, there's no lack of hippos.
Who didn't play Hungry, Hungry Hippo as a kid?
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