A hippopotamus stands out among the reeds in the Water Safari Camp Eagle Island Camp by Orient Express, outside the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana. Although not a strictly nocturnal animals are active at night. They spend most of the day sleeping or wallowing in the water or mud with the other members of their group. The water serves to keep their body temperature down and prevent your skin from drying. Except to eat most of their lives (courtship struggles including delivery) occurring in the water. They leave the water at dusk and travel inland, sometimes up to eight kilometers, to graze on short grass, their main source of food, helping to draw the entire lips. They spend four to five hours grazing and can consume about seventy pounds of grass each night (about 5% by weight) 17 11 Like most herbivores, consume other plants if given the chance, but his diet in the wild consists almost entirely of grass, with a minimum consumption of plants acuáticas.18 They have been seen eating carrion sometimes but very rarely, and always near water, and there are even reports of cannibalism and depredación.19 The anatomy of the stomach of hippos is not suited for a carnivorous diet, so eating meat is probably due to aberrant behavior or nutritional stress. Although their diet is mostly herbal land, since they spend most of the time in the water most of their bowel movements occur in the water, creating allochthonous deposits of organic matter in the riverbeds. These deposits have an ecological function clara.18 Because of its size and habit generally use the same paths to feed, hippos can have a significant impact on land spanning both because these areas are free of vegetation and by the depressions in the ground. If this occurs for extended periods may divert marsh channels and canals. Adult hippos can not float and swim. When in deep water, they usually propel short jumps along the bottom, move at speeds greater than five miles per hour in the water. However, young people do move float and pulse usually swimming with his hind legs. Adults emerge to breathe every three to five minutes, and the young have to breathe every two or three minutes. The process of the surfacing and breathing is automatic, and even a hippo sleeping underwater will rise and breathe without waking. When submerged the nostrils shut. Studying the interaction between males and females has long been complicated. As there is no sexual dimorphism in this species is very difficult to distinguish them in the wild. Although they like to be in proximity to each other, does not seem to form social bonds except between mothers and children, and are not social animals. The reason we come together as close to each other is unknown. Are territorial only in water, where a male controls a small stretch of river about 250 m long on average to establish mating rights and containing ten females. Larger groups can contain up to a hundred individuals. Allow the presence of other males in your area, but always to submit to the authority of the dominant male. Within groups tend to segregate by gender. Young males with other males remain unmarried females remain with other females and the dominant male remains alone. When they leave the water to go to eat, they do individually. Hippopotamuses appear to communicate verbally, grunts and bellows, and are believed to have some ability to echolocation, but the purpose of these vocalizations is unknown. They can keep their heads above water part and issue a cry that travels both by water and by air, and respond to it both hippos that are on and off the water.