Hippos are more flexible than you previously thought. A recent study from the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, shows that the fifth-heaviest land mammal is capable of taking off while trotting at high speeds.
When researchers analyzed footage of 32 hippos performing 169 different gaits, they said they had never seen galloping. Instead, these extremely muscular mammals stick to a trot (or near-trot)—a pattern in which their feet land diagonally. When running, their trot has a brief aerial phase; at top speed, hippos are reported to spend approximately 15% of each step entirely in the air. To the researchers’ knowledge, this aerial phase has not been reported before.
Their preference for trotting is “an unusual pattern among large terrestrial mammals,” the researchers said. For example, rhinos and giraffes use different footwork patterns at different speeds. (This may not always be unusual, however; long-necked dinosaurs may have adopted a gait somewhat similar to hippopotamuses, for example, according to unrelated research.)
Hippos spend most of their time in the water, but at dusk, they “slowly crawl onto land” and eat about 80 pounds of grass in the dark, according to National Geographic. Their aquatic nature and sometimes aggressive nature make studying mammals tricky, said the study’s lead author, John R. Hutchinson, professor of evolutionary biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College.
“Hippos aren’t usually kept in captivity for easy access, and even then they tend to be difficult to cooperate because they don’t spend much time on land and are nocturnal, making them difficult to motivate, and if they are motivated, they will Extremely dangerous, Hutchinson told Gizmodo that in captivity they have little training, and “there are all kinds of problems with handling them (you basically have to be lucky to catch the rare, fast hippos).” he added.
Hutchinson also acknowledged that it is a “pretty niche topic.”
“There is no answer to this question, partly because few scientists want to know it (and disclose it in a paper, anyway),” he said. “But since my research focuses on how heavy animals are significantly limited in their ability to move on land, sooner or later I had to solve this problem.”
