Watch two of Africa’s largest and heaviest animals go head-to-head in a scene very rarely seen. The hippopotamus is trying his luck with the rhino, but the rhino isn’t.
At that time, it was still the dry season in the reserve and the animals were fighting with what little grass was available. The area around the runway was quite barren and I think hippos were more curious and lonelier because at that time many hippos had left the area due to drought.
I’m not sure what the end result of the interaction would be but we never saw any animals get injured after that so I can only assume it ended peacefully. As you can see in the video, this is not a meeting that is overly aggressive, but a meeting with more confusion.
As I mentioned, I don’t think it has anything to do with the food/resources contention as we are far from the river and don’t have grass on the runway to contend with – I think this hippo might just be simply lonely and bored or simply curious.
I have never seen anything like this before or since