![]() ![]() They have to get their protein, their meat, from somewhere. "The armies are living off of hippo meat, because basically when they're out in the bush, they don't have any other source of food. They're disappearing because they're being eaten by competing bands of marauding militias. There were 30,000 hippos in Congo in 1974. We've seen a reduction of 95 percent," said Kimunga Mugo, who works with the World Wildlife Fund. "Their numbers have reduced dramatically over the last 35 or so years. While wildlife in Uganda is thriving, right across this lake from where the hippos and their animal friends are living in relative peace is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an all-out civil war has resulted in the massacre of not only people, but also hippos. We had no choice but to opt for an alternate route.Ĭarnage in Congo: Civil War Leads to Hippo Massacre Our guide and his colleague throw rocks to get him to move, but he wouldn't budge. These animals might seem mellow, but they aren't afraid to use their huge, intimidating horns to attack. On our visit to Uganda, we also encountered an aggressive male water buck. Hippos are a key part of an ecosystem that includes a variety of creatures, from goose-stepping cormorants to regal eagles to dancing antelopes. However, they have been known to tangle with predators like lions or crocodiles on occasion. You know it is better to fight a predator than fight your fellow friends," Peter said. The buffalos cannot even fight a hippo the hippo also cannot fight a buffalo, because they are all grass-eaters. "They are friendly because they are all grass-eaters. Despite occasional run-ins with the humans in the area, the hippos peacefully co-exist with other large herbivores like elephants and water buffalos. The swift herbivores of the Serengeti today would outpace Anteosaurus, Kammerer says, but perhaps the chase was on in a world where big plant-munchers moved like tortoises.Compared with other countries, Uganda is a veritable paradise for hippos. “Whether it was an ambush or pursuit predator is a very difficult thing to address, and perhaps unknowable,” given that animals at that time were quite different from modern ones. Anteosaurus probably had leaner limbs than related herbivores so it seems that this animal could have been capable of running bursts, he says. Much of what’s known about Anteosaurus beyond the skull comes from its close relatives, says Christian Kammerer, a paleontologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh who was not part of the study. Additional information from the rest of the skeleton would help us better understand how anteosaurs may have moved, he says. But even in today’s beasts, scientists don’t know exactly how inner ears influence different types of motion. The study draws on analyses of the inner ears of modern mammals, distant relatives of the group of reptiles that includes anteosaurs. Jack Tseng, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved with the work. These are reasonable conclusions, but “it’s not the smoking gun” that anteosaurs were fleet-footed, says Z. All of these findings suggest that Anteosaurus was an agile hunter, Kruger says, with the ability to move quickly and track its prey. ![]() magnificus appears to have held its head more level, allowing it to more easily scan the environment. magnificus’ skull with that of its head-butting, herbivorous relation Moschognathus whaitsi. The shape of these bones also suggests that anteosaurs may have benefited from a rather large brain region used to coordinate motion while surveilling prey, the researchers report February 18 in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. They found that the animal’s inner ears - bony tubes that help with balance - dwarfed those of its peer predators. Relying on CT scans of fossil skull segments excavated in South Africa, Kruger and his team digitally reconstructed the long, bumpy noggin of a juvenile A. The skull of an Anteosaurus magnificus appears to tell a different story. Based on the reptiles’ size, which was around that of today’s hippos or rhinos, researchers had pegged the Permian Period predators as sluggish beasts that waited to ambush prey. “This contradicts what we knew about anteosaurs before,” says Ashley Kruger, a paleontologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. A new analysis of an anteosaur skull suggests that these hefty reptiles may have been relatively speedy. Some 260 million years ago, before the rise of dinosaurs, bone-crushing anteosaurs reigned as land’s largest predators. ![]()
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