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201513Dec18:55

Hip­pos highly sus­cep­ti­ble to anthrax due to evo­lu­tion­ar­ily deter­mined meat eating

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pub­lished 13 Decem­ber 2015 | mod­i­fied 13 Decem­ber 2015
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Peo­ple often think hip­pos are her­bi­vores with big smil­ing faces. Every now and then, reports of a hip­popota­mus (Hip­popota­mus amphibius) hunt­ing down prey, eat­ing a car­cass, or steal­ing prey from a croc­o­dile are heard, but they’re typ­i­cally con­sid­ered ‘aber­rant’ or ‘unusual’ behaviour.

These reports fit the fact that hip­pos are the clos­est liv­ing rel­a­tives of whales, which are all carnivorous
Mar­cus Clauss, co-​author, Clinic for Zoo Ani­mals, Exotic Pets and Wildlife, Vet­su­isse Fac­ulty, Uni­ver­sity of Zurich, Switzerland »

hippo whale treeThe fam­ily tree of mod­ern whales and their first cousin, the hip­popota­mus, show­ing how the now-​extinct anthra­cotheres are the link between their dis­tant ances­tors. (Credit: Jean-​Renaud Boisserie/​UC Berkeley)

hippos eating meatNow, how­ever, a col­lab­o­ra­tion among researchers from 4 con­ti­nents demon­strates that car­nivory, or eat­ing meat, is not uncom­mon among hip­pos at all, and that this behav­iour may increase their sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to mass mor­tal­ity dur­ing anthrax out­breaks. Hip­pos, ele­phants, buf­falo or ante­lope are often affected by anthrax epi­demics, but anthrax out­breaks among hip­pos exhibit cer­tain unusual char­ac­ter­is­tics that could be explained by con­sump­tion of the car­casses of infected ani­mals — espe­cially those of other hip­pos. The study find­ings are first pub­lished online on 6 Decem­ber in the jour­nal Mam­mal Review.

The phe­nom­e­non of car­nivory by hip­pos is cru­cial to an under­stand­ing of their sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to this dis­ease,” said Joseph Dud­ley, co-​author of the study.

All whales are car­niv­o­rous and preda­tory
Toothed whales (Odon­to­ceti), as a whole, mostly feed on fish and cephalopods, and then fol­lowed by crus­taceans and bivalves. All species are gen­er­al­ist and oppor­tunis­tic feed­ers. Baleen whales (Mys­ticeti), as a whole, mostly feed on krill and plank­ton, fol­lowed by crus­taceans and other inver­te­brates. A few are spe­cial­ists. Exam­ples include the blue whale, which eats almost exclu­sively krill, the minke whale, which eats mainly school­ing fish, the sperm whale, which spe­cial­ize on squid, and the grey whale which feed on bottom-​dwelling inver­te­brates. The elab­o­rate baleen “teeth” of filter-​feeding species, the mys­ticetes, allow them to remove water before they swal­low their plank­tonic food by using the teeth as a sieve. Usu­ally whales hunt soli­tar­ily, but they do some­times hunt coop­er­a­tively in small groups. The for­mer behav­iour is typ­i­cal when hunt­ing non-​schooling fish, slow-​moving or immo­bile inver­te­brates or endother­mic prey. When large amounts of prey are avail­able, whales such as cer­tain baleen whales hunt coop­er­a­tively in small groups. Some cetaceans may for­age with other kinds of ani­mals, such as other species of whales or cer­tain species of pinnipeds.


(Source: Wiley press release, 07.12.2015; Wikipedia; UC Berke­ley press release, 24.01.2005)


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