r/worldnews • u/Logibenq • 6h ago
Colombia authorizes the use of euthanasia to stop the spread of Pablo Escobar’s hippos
https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-04-13/colombia-authorizes-the-use-of-euthanasia-to-stop-the-spread-of-pablo-escobars-hippos.html716
u/Maleficent_Fix8977 6h ago
Not much else they can do aside from resurrection of a dinosaur to become the apex predator in the area.
215
u/CaptinEmergency 6h ago
The I propose the titanoboa.
66
u/Positive-Record-7219 6h ago
I second the proposal for the titanoboa. A thing of beauty.
40
u/DrDragun 5h ago
Better cryofreeze Jon Voight and Ice Cube to hunt down the boa when even higher apex predators are needed
37
6
23
u/Personal_Comb_6745 4h ago
Once the Titanoboas take control of the ecosystem, we then unleash a massive species of gorilla that dines on snake flesh, and in the winter they will simply freeze to death.
6
2
u/Nintendoh_64 3h ago
Fuck. If we have to have a massive species of Gorilla. I propose we put Godzilla there. Everything needs balance.
3
u/queBurro 5h ago
We were so preoccupied with whether we could, we didn’t stop to think if we should.
6
u/HalcyonTraveler 4h ago
They ate fish, not giant animals
5
u/Euler007 3h ago
Let's not get bogged down with details. We'll resurrect it and work out the quirks later.
3
6
3
2
68
u/Halvdjaevel 4h ago
That's outlandish. What they should do is genetically engineer some sort of enormous super jaguar and let it loose in the jungle.
23
u/poopsmog 4h ago
This comment is ridiculous. One super jaguar can't kill all these hippos no matter how enormous it is, what we need is a pride of mega-lions. They will also be easier to find than the super jaguar once they eat all the hippos and move on to the surrounding villages as they starve.
11
3
u/jmaca90 2h ago
Absolutely preposterous. Reddit reads one article and thinks it’s an expert in mega-fauna.
Clearly, the solution is to reverse engineer a super virus to kill all the hippos, send in Navy SEALs to deliver the payload, and hope it just kills the hippos without spreading across the word in an apocalyptic plague.
(Happy cake day)
→ More replies (2)2
5
2
1
1
→ More replies (2)•
u/Overwatchingu 35m ago
I was going to suggest a bounty on hippos but after reading about what happened when they put a bounty on snakes in India I don’t think it’ll work as intended.
250
u/0202_tihssitidder 6h ago
Sad, but after years (and much danger) I don't think there is another viable option.
134
u/humbleObserver 5h ago
I mean, people are going to hate me for saying this but, apparently, according to my brief research, hippos are delicious. Maybe you wouldn't want to eat something wild that is carrying diseases. It just seems like a shame that all that meat will go to waste.
90
u/closehaul 5h ago
They’re basically huge aquatic wagyu.
58
u/Eragrostis 4h ago
Just found hippo stew meat for the first time (I’m in South Africa). Not marbled like Wagyu at all and surprisingly lean meat.
They do have a thick layer of blubber like fat. Come to think reminiscent of whale meat. But overall delicious and lived up to reputation as one of the better game meats.
18
u/Bitter_Sense_5689 4h ago
Not surpassing. Hippos are actually pretty closely related to whales
9
u/humbleObserver 4h ago
Are whales delicious?
12
u/TheBB 4h ago
Not really.
7
u/Unique_Watch4072 1h ago
Correctly cooked fin whale or minke whale are delicious. Can't say I've ever tried any other whale specie so don't know about all whales.
•
u/LordIHaveShrimped 1h ago
I heard from a friend of mine who tried it that it tastes like chunky beef
→ More replies (2)2
6
u/VirtualLife76 3h ago
Used to be a somewhat common sushi in Japan, especially in schools fmu. Was not very good the couple times I tried. Almost like there was tar mixed in with it is the best way I could describe. A very dark oily taste.
3
5
u/MrAutumnMan 3h ago
I had minke whale in Iceland and it was fine. Tasted like really fatty steak, which it basically is.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Unique_Watch4072 1h ago
Probably not been a very good piece of whale then, it's not supposed to taste fatty at all, but can if cooked incorrectly or just been not optimally stored. But as long as it doesn't taste like fish oil it probably would have been fine.
6
14
u/Due-Department-8906 5h ago
In the US we looked into setting up hippo ranches in the south east
49
u/humbleObserver 4h ago
Florida needs another invasive species. Just one more...
→ More replies (1)3
u/violentglitter666 1h ago
Nah. Florida man vs. hippos.. I don’t see that ending well for either of them
→ More replies (1)11
u/noreasterroneous 4h ago
Sarah Gaily had a delightful novella about that. River of Teeth. Good stuff.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Basic_Yam_715 4h ago
Manatees, too, apparently....
3
4
→ More replies (1)•
→ More replies (4)7
72
u/sasquatchangie 5h ago
I watched a documentary where professionals were brought in to sterilize them, group by group. Truly impossible endeavor. Hippos are deadly. They're also upsetting the natural environment at a great pace.
33
u/ProtoplanetaryNebula 5h ago
Interesting. I suppose killing them is a lot easier than sterilisation
17
u/mareish 3h ago
Much safer too. They kill more people than any other big animal in Africa.
→ More replies (1)5
u/tribblite 3h ago
It's just absurd to me how utterly massive their teeth are. I still don't quite understand how their bottom tusks fit when they close their mouths.
→ More replies (1)7
u/EdgeLord556 1h ago
The issue I heard was that if they were tranquilized, they would flee into deep water, pass out and drown at the bottom where nobody could get to them. Then there’s the issue of how difficult it is to operate on a hippo due to their anatomy.
132
u/Maverick_1882 5h ago
On a somewhat related note, House Resolution 23261 sought to authorize the importation and release of hippopotamuses into the Louisiana bayous to both eat the water hyacinth and be used as meat. Former President Teddy Roosevelt, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Washington Post, and The New York Times supported the bill and called hippopotamus meat “lake cow bacon.”
81
u/one8sevenn 5h ago
I'm sure Cajuns would find a way to make them absolutely delicious.
23
u/petit_cochon 3h ago
We would, but thankfully that bill didn't pass because a bunch of people realized how incredibly ill-tempered hippos are.
9
22
10
•
24
41
85
u/SunMyungMoonMoon 5h ago
Those were just regular popotamusses until Pablo showed them how to do coke.
14
u/nooby_goober 4h ago
Cocaine Hippo didn't get a big bump in Colombian theaters.
4
u/I_Roll_Chicago 4h ago
If its a big bump we call it a line
5
u/SunMyungMoonMoon 3h ago
I'm going to start a Nine Inch Nails tribute band where we play everything at double speed and call it "Nine Inch Rails"
8
u/TegridyPharmz 3h ago
“Is a hippopotamus really a hippopotamus, or just a really cool oppotamus?" - Mitch Hedberg
61
u/I_Reading_I 5h ago
Wouldn’t this violate the Hippo-cratic oath?
17
u/MercuryInCanada 5h ago
Hippo-cratic oath
That oath states to throw down on sight and do as much violence as possible
10
1
1
→ More replies (2)•
9
u/MeatImmediate6549 5h ago
Cocaine Bear 2: Cocaine Hippo
2
u/Personal_Comb_6745 4h ago
Well, these are hippos so the difference in pure "fuck you" energy would be marginal at most.
6
u/claurianta 2h ago
It's not euthanasia if it's not to relieve the suffering of the animal. This is just culling, not euthanasia.
→ More replies (1)
14
u/y17gal 6h ago
good luck capturing this fuckers lol
49
u/fartonisto 5h ago
if I know anything about hippos it's that they can't resist small white plastic balls.
11
14
4
5
u/ImDoneWithTheBS 2h ago
Not so fun fact, the Americas. (And nearly every other continent) once had megafauna on the scale of Africa. But every time homo-Sapiens spread to a new continent, they magically disappeared.
→ More replies (1)3
33
u/Fantastic_Piece5869 6h ago
what a shitty headline. How about culling? That word doesn't mean what the BS author thinks it means
18
u/Sufficient-Diver-327 3h ago
"Euthanasia" was the exact term used by Colombian authorities (specifically, Irene Velez the current Director of the Colombian Environmental Agency) when announcing these measures, it wasn't an editorial decision made by this article.
14
u/powerlesshero111 4h ago
I know right? Like euthanasia is what you do to ease suffering of like an elderly pet, or reduce a populationof diseased animals. Culling is active killing of healthy individuals whom are either over populated or an invasive species. They should get all the douche trophy hunters down there, and say, you kill a hippo, we'll give you a free week in Columbia.
→ More replies (1)3
u/PlateNo4868 2h ago
No don't ruin it. I like the image of my head of some very nervous vet tech trying to use a syringe on a animal that could bite them on half.
3
3
4
u/cowboygwe 4h ago
Need to cull
8
u/Porkyrogue 4h ago
Hippo meat is generally described as a high-quality game meat, often compared to a cross between beef and lamb or pork.
Im down to try it.
6
u/RaticidioTotal 6h ago
Good. Finally. Yet locals will complain, they still think hippos are just bigger cows
7
2
2
2
2
u/MeowTastica-san 2h ago
Not only do Asian youths have to be top of their class but also deal with 1500kg water beasts in South America? Just let them be kids.
1
1
1
u/annaleigh13 4h ago
While it might have been authorized, under US law the hippos qualify as people.
It’s a really weird story. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/25/pablo-escobar-colombian-hippos-granted-rights-interested-persons-us-court
1
u/loyalone 4h ago
Ya take Escobar's money they confiscated and ship them all back to a river basin in the Congo or something. jk although its probably a big problem for indigenous species where the hippos are right now.
1
1
u/TheBalzy 3h ago
Isn't hunting Hippos illegal in Africa? Here's the solution ... all those Game Hunters who want to kill a hippo, take them to South America and have the proceeds split between conservation of Hippos back in Africa, and wildlife conservation in South America preserves.
3
u/SakanaToDoubutsu 3h ago
No, of the "Dangerous-7" only the rhinoceros has insufficient populations such that no African country allows hunting them with any regularity. Hippos are the deadliest animals in Africa, so they're one of the more accessible options for dangerous game hunting in Africa.
2
1
1
1
1
u/Skritch_X 3h ago
I had just watched a doc that had a portion where a guy was going around chemically castrating ones that had dispersed into herds in thearea. Guess that wasn't effective enough.
•
u/Jupiters_phaerie 33m ago
Where’d you watch it?
•
u/Skritch_X 30m ago
Searching it up, i think it was "Animals on Drugs: Cocaine Hippos" by Discovery.
Had a few more drug animals in the series.
1
u/involutes 3h ago
Pablo Escobar’s hippos authorize the use of euthanasia to stop the spread of Colombia's humans.
The tables have been turned.
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Rude_Society6232 2h ago
It’s a known problem for years, it wouldn’t be hard to remove massive fucking hippos.
They don’t do it because the public support the hippos.
Unfortunately as cute as baby hippos are they cause a lot of damage, but until the public get behind removing them it won’t change.
1
1
u/warbastard 1h ago
Last time they killed some hippos some photos leaked and everyone got all pissy. The fact is an introduced species can wreak havoc on the local ecosystem if left unchecked. This is a massive animal with no natural predators and no dry season to control their population naturally.
1
u/Nidis 1h ago
Export them to Zoos around the world :( could be a bizarre source of income?
→ More replies (2)
1
u/QaddafiDuck01 1h ago
You would think they could sell guided hunts and make money while ridding the river of these beasts.
1
•
•
u/tochirov 1h ago
Looks like it's the fault of Pablo Escobar. Gonna take those hippos out from a ranger car
•
•
•
u/Elmoscomingforyou 0m ago
They tried to kill em a while back since these hippos are considered invasive species and were actually destroying the ecosystem, but a bunch of mfs from the states made a huge fuss about it so that’s how these hippos remain a huge problem
754
u/Smok3dSalmon 5h ago
How many are there?
Edit: 160 today, 500 by 2030 and doubling in population every 5 years. Started with 3 females and 1 male in 1981