How 4 Hippos Became Colombia's Biggest Problem

In June 2009, a photo of soldiers standing over a body in the grass went round Colombia. The body was a hippo called Pepe, and the outrage was so loud that nobody tried it again for fifteen years. That turned out to be very expensive. In 1981 Pablo Escobar bought four hippos for the zoo on his ranch, Hacienda Nápoles. When he was killed in 1993, the government moved the giraffes and the elephants and left the hippos behind, expecting them to die off. Instead they found a river with no dry season and no predators. Today there are around two hundred of them along the Magdalena River. They've injured farm workers, been hit on the highway, turned lakes green, been declared legal persons by a US court, been booked onto planes to India and Mexico that never left, and in 2026 they were finally sentenced. Who is actually guilty here? Sources: Shurin et al., Ecology 2020 ("Ecosystem effects of the world's largest invasive animal"); Castelblanco-Martínez et al., Biological Conservation 2021 ("A hippo in the room"); Instituto Humboldt population count (2023); In re Application of Community of Hippopotamuses Living in the Magdalena River, S.D. Ohio, 15 Oct 2021 (Animal Legal Defense Fund); Administrative Court of Cundinamarca ruling (Sept 2024); Colombian Ministry of Environment announcements (April and September 2026); reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, CBS, NPR and Al Jazeera. Chapters: 0:00 The photograph 1:34 Chapter 1 · The zoo 3:31 Chapter 2 · The fall 5:09 Chapter 3 · The hideout 7:20 Chapter 4 · The hit 9:07 Chapter 5 · The expansion 10:48 Chapter 6 · The evidence 13:21 Chapter 7 · The lawyers 15:48 Chapter 8 · The deportation 17:23 Chapter 9 · The sentence 19:08 Chapter 10 · The verdict #animals #hippo #documentary