iStockphoto / Jennifer Sophie
Imagine leaving the bar after last call and you step outside to find a group if hippos, known as a bloat of hippos, walking down main street in Saint Lucia, South Africa. The scene described unfolded last month in the town that’s a hub for the nearby iSimangaliso Wetland Park which is home to an estimated 800 hippopotami.
With that many South African hippos in the region, seeing these enormous animals isn’t the rarest occurrence in the world but there’s truly no time in life you expect to see a deadly animal weighing up to 10,000 pounds walking down main street.
A clip of the encounter has gone viral on TikTok after it was shared over the weekend by ABC News. Onlookers are whispering from nearby as the hippos walk down the South African street, sniffing the ground as they go like a couple of dogs out for a walk getting in their olfactory enrichment.
Another clip from the same encounter:
Something about this clip has me REALLY wanting to visit this part of South Africa now. And according to the description on TikTok, the clip was filmed late last month in Saint Lucia, South Africa which sits just inland from the coast.
Interestingly, when trying to learn more about this clip I came across other similar videos from years past. This one was from 2020 where a hippo strolled up to a South African gas station to see what was going down:
I’ve never been to Saint Lucia, South Africa but after seeing all of this hippo action I simply have to add it to my bucket list of destinations I want to see. They’ve got ‘warning: hippos at night’ signs up around down. It could be worth the trip just for a selfie with the sign, right?
All that said, we haven’t even mentioned how hippos are the deadliest large mammal in the world and one of the deadliest animals in all of Africa. They account for around 500 human deaths every single year. Hippos are fast and land and even faster in the water.
They can weigh up to 10,000 pounds and easily crush prey with their weight but that’s if they don’t use their 1.6-foot teeth to bite down on prey beforehand. That’s not exactly an animal you want to come face to face with when stumbling out of a pub.