This three images are not simply three low quality black and white pictures of an animal, they are very much more. These are three frames of a video footage that is the proof that the elusive and endangered Pigmy Hippopotamus is not extinct. This smaller brother of the common Hippo, is very rare and its habitat is confined to Liberia and its boundaries. Due to the disappearing of its habitat, poaching and most of all the First and the Second Liberian Civil war, scientist were worried that the species could be extinct in the wild (while many individuals are quite succesfully kept in zoos).
Pigmy hippo is a very bashful nocturnal forest creature that lives hidden near rivers and swamps in the dense west African forests of Liberia. It is so elusive and secretive that uses the dense jungle as cover and shuns even its own species except for mating. It moves and left its hiding place only by night, in order to feed.
For all of these reasons this species is really difficult to study or even see in the wild.
Moreover the Liberian war, one of the most vicious and bloody war in history (I've lived some years in Liberia and I know perfectly what I'm talking about) has caused more than 200,000 people dead and left the other in a condition so terrible that had compelled the survivors to eat all kinds of wild animals, pigmy hippos included. It seems a miracle that this little and shy animal could have survived that massacre.
The proof arrive from a Zoological Society of London team that managed to caught on film a hippo thanks to many camera traps that they had set up in the jungle.
LONG LIVE PIGMY HIPPOS!
The following are images of Pigmy hippos kept in zoos, aren' they cute?
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