A hippopotamus spends much of the day in water and grazes on land at night. It uses rivers, lakes and nearby grassland.
Eyes, ears and nostrils sit high on the head. This lets it see and breathe while most of its body is submerged.
On land, hippos commonly move diagonally opposite feet approximately together: right fore with left hind, then left fore with right hind. This near-trotting pattern occurs during both slow and fast movements. Some fast movements include brief moments with all four feet clear of the ground.
A 2024 study analysed 169 strides from 32 hippos, combining online videos with footage of two zoo adults in Britain. Frame-by-frame analysis identified foot contact and lift-off. The zoo animals supplied slow movements, including travel from water toward their stable, while online footage supplied faster movements, some clearly showing aerial phases. As movement became faster, ground-contact duration decreased more strongly than the time spent swinging a foot through the air.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
SANParks’ 2023/2024 research report identifies drought-driven loss of surface water as a conservation concern for hippos. Across six Kruger rivers, counts fell by about 2,500 animals, 38.6%, between comparable periods in 2015 and 2016. Researchers initiated a long-term study and describe a next phase examining how surface-water changes in rivers and dams affect movements and densities.