Pygmy hippopotamus

Pygmy hippos eat only plants.

They eat leaves, grass, ferns and fallen fruit. They can stand on their back legs to reach food up high.

Pygmy hippos are herbivores. At night they wander the forest floor and swamps, eating herbs, broad-leaved plants, grasses, water plants, ferns and fruit that has fallen to the ground. They spend about six hours a day feeding.

If food is out of reach, a pygmy hippo can stand up on its hind legs to get it. Its stomach has four chambers, but unlike a cow it does not chew its food a second time.

Animal Diversity Web lists a broad plant diet: herbs, broad-leaved plants, grasses, semi-aquatic plants, herbaceous shoots, forbs, sedges, ferns and fallen fruit. Feeding takes about six hours a day, mostly from late afternoon to around midnight, and the animals can rear onto their hind legs to reach higher food.

The pygmy hippo is described as a pseudo-ruminant: its stomach has four chambers, but it does not ferment food with microbes in the same way as true ruminants such as cattle, and it does not chew the cud. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance stresses that much remains to be learned about its diet in the wild.

Pygmy hippos like to be alone.

They rest in water in the day. They come out at night to eat. If something scares them, they run and hide.

Unlike common hippos, which live in groups, pygmy hippos usually live alone. They are seen in pairs only when a male and female meet to mate or when a mother has a calf. They rest hidden in swamps and rivers during the heat of the day and come out to feed at night.

Pygmy hippos are shy. When startled, they run off into the plants rather than stand and fight. They are usually silent, but they can grunt, hiss, squeak and give a loud huff.

Pygmy hippos are solitary and largely nocturnal, active from late afternoon to around midnight. They seem not to be territorial: male home ranges of 165 to 185 hectares overlap several female ranges of 40 to 80 hectares. Individuals advertise their presence with dung, spread by vigorously wagging the tail, and when two meet they tend simply to ignore each other.

They rest by day in water or on banks and sleep on land, sometimes in burrows, changing sleeping places once or twice a week. When startled they flee into vegetation or water. Leopards are their main predator; pythons and crocodiles are possible ones. Calls include snorts, grunts, hisses and squeaks.

There are not many pygmy hippos left.

Their forests are being cut down. People are working to protect them and the places where they live.

The pygmy hippo is endangered. The IUCN estimates that there are only 2,000 to 2,499 adults left in the wild, and the number is going down. Their forests are being cut down or burned, rivers are polluted, and in logged areas people hunt them for meat.

Pygmy hippos are protected by law in all four countries where they live, and some live in national forests and reserves. Experts say more conservation work is still needed to keep them safe.

The IUCN assessed the pygmy hippo as Endangered in 2015 (criterion C1), with 2,000 to 2,499 mature individuals and a decreasing trend. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance names the main threats as forest loss from logging and burning, polluted rivers and hunting for meat in logged areas.

The species has full legal protection in all four range countries, and remaining populations outside Liberia are mostly in national forests and reserves, but SDZWA stresses that greater conservation action is needed. Animal Diversity Web notes that, apart from recent habitat loss, the species' range may never have been much larger than it is today.