THE PIGMY HIPPOPOTAMUS 
full-grown bull of the common species might easily weigh as much as 
fourteen adult male pigmy hippos ! 
At first sight a pigmy hippo looks like a very young specimen of the 
common species, but its legs are longer and slighter in proportion 
to its size, and its skull is more rounded on its upper surface than in 
H. amphibius. Its feet, too, are very different, and it seems to walk on the 
two front toes alone, using the two posterior ones as props when standing. 
The pigmy hippo also lacks the very prominent eyes of its larger relative, 
a provision which enables the latter species to lie in the water with its whole 
body submerged and no part of the head exposed, with the exception of 
the nostrils and the prominent eyes. 
The comparative length of the legs, the formation of the feet, and the 
absence of protruberant eyes would suggest that the pigmy hippo is more 
terrestrial in its habits than H . amphibius ; and this is doubtless the case, 
though the smoothness of its skin seems to show that it must pass a good 
deal of its time in water, probably lying half submerged in shallow pools 
or streams with its head entirely out of water. It seems, however, to be an 
expert swimmer and diver, for Major Hans Schomburgk, who captured 
the two pigmy hippos now in the Zoological Park near New York, relates, 
in his account of the expedition in search of them, that “ after a month’s 
hard hunting, I at last had the luck to see a pigmy hippo. I was drifting 
down the river in my canoe late one afternoon, when I saw the animal 
trying to climb up the steep bank of the river. Before it had noticed us we 
were within ten yards. Not five yards from the canoe the little brute 
dropped back into the water and disappeared.” Further on. Major 
Schomburgk says: “ The greatest difficulty in hunting the Liberian 
hippopotamus is that, unlike their big cousins, they do not frequent 
the rivers. They make their home deep in the inhospitable forest, in 
the dense vegetation on the banks of the small forest streams; but, not 
satisfied with the protection the forest .affords them, they enlarge the 
hollows which the water has washed out under the banks, and in these 
tunnels, where they are invisible from the bank, they sleep during the 
heat of the day.” 
The pigmy hippo is said never to congregate in herds, but to live in 
pairs, wandering at night through the forests it frequents, and browsing 
on the green foliage and fresh shoots of various bushes, as well as eating 
young grass and reeds. As a rule, it appears to be very wary and difficult 
to approach, and is not often seen, even by the natives living in the country 
29 
