ELEPHANT VS HIPPOPOTAMUS - Who Would Win This Heavy Fight?

Elephant vs Hippopotamus Who would win this heavy fight? Pachyderms are classified as large animals with thick skin. This includes tapirs, rhinos, hippos, and elephants. These animals come with their own built-in defense system, but what would happen if two of them went up against one another? An elephant and a hippopotamus, two of nature's largest, heftiest creatures on land today, what would happen if they went head to head? It's heavy on heavy, so who wins the heavy fight? Elephants Let's start with the big boy that everyone knows lots about, the elephant. Then again, there's a few things about the elephant that most people don't know. Like saying elephant is too broad a term, because there are actually five subspecies of elephant alive today. And secondly, you might think the elephant is closely related to his challenger today, the hippo, but there is a surprising animal he is more closely related to, and that animal may not even be living on land. The African bush elephant is the largest of all elephants, and it's also the largest living land animal. Since we're doing a heavy fight, we want to concentrate on the heaviest elephant. The African bush elephant is enormous. They stand about 10 to 11 feet tall at the shoulder, and they often weigh about 15,000 pounds, sometimes weighing even more than that. Elephants are not just heavy, that weight comes with power. The muscles may not be rippling and hidden underneath that thick skin, but they're there. The African bush elephant showcases these muscles in a variety of ways. One is with incredible charging speed, able to hit 25 miles per hour when running. They can also knock over humongous trees with their gigantic legs. When it comes to heavy lifting, their trunks alone can lift hundreds of pounds. Those big powerful trunks are located directly between those very strong and very sharp tusks. Their tusks can be between 5 and 8 feet long and can weigh 100 pounds each. Not the type of thing you want to run into. Elephants are herbivores, so they don't hunt down animals for food, and they're also generally peaceful. However, they can become aggressive for a number of reasons. If they are protecting their children and feel a predator is near, when male elephants are in must, which is part of their natural hormonal cycle, and also at any other point when they feel to be in danger or need to be defensive of themselves and others. This is when you see elephants charging people who are out on safari. The people have gotten too close, and the elephant considers them a threat. And if the people aren't fast enough, they may as well consider themselves pancakes, because those big old elephant feet will squash them in a hurry. Some predators will go after young elephants like lions. Adult elephants have been known to use their tusks to either scoop and fling the predator away, or even just as two gigantic swords. And we all have an idea of what an 8-foot sword could do. And elephants are highly intelligent animals, often recognized as one of the most intelligent animals alive today. They have excellent memories, able to recall specific migration routes, and they can problem solve like the best of them. So they have the smarts, they have the offense, and for the defense, that thick skin, so hard to penetrate. They're the full package. That thick skin is what classifies them as a pachyderm, and it's the reason we tend to think elephants and rhinos and hippos are all closely related. And though they are, each of them is more closely related to different species. For instance, rhinos are more closely linked to horses. And then elephants, you may be surprised, their closest relatives are actually manatees and dugongs. It does make some sense. Give a manatee legs, tusks, a trunk, and a much more muscular frame, and you basically have an elephant. But what about the hippo? Who are his cousins? Hippos. It's funny, hippopotamus in Greek actually means river horse. Not a bad description. Now, hippos spend a lot of time in water, and they probably have a much more similar frame to a manatee or a dugong. But again, it's a different pachyderm closely related to them. As we mentioned, that was the elephant. But the hippo is actually most closely related to pigs and camels, though some scientists argue they're closer to that of whales. But of those three animals, hippos are by far the most aquatic of the bunch. Not only do hippo births occur in the water, but hippos also consider areas of rivers and lakes as part of their territory, and they watch over them quite well and with extreme aggression if they need to. Hippos are considered semi-aquatic. Their bodies are well adapted to living much of their lives in the water. Their eyes and nostrils are located on top of their head, so they can be nearly fully submerged underwater and still see and breathe. They can also fold their ears and nostrils shut when they do fully submerge underwater, so that they can keep the water out. They can hold their breath for up to five minutes, and they can move through the water pretty quickly. Sometimes they run or bound on the river bottom, and sometimes they do their own special blend of diving and popping back up to move through the water at about five miles per hour. On land, they can move about 20 miles per hour. As big and bulky as they are, they are fast. There are two subspecies of hippo left alive, though one is the pygmy hippo. We are focusing more on the modern hippo, a behemoth of this planet. They're about 5 feet tall at the shoulder and will range anywhere from 9 to 16 feet in length, and full-grown hippos will easily weigh over 3,000 pounds. Sometimes they even exceed 5,000 pounds. Hippos have barrel-shaped bodies and smaller legs, so you may look at them and think they are soft, chunky animals. Surprisingly, their bodies have little fat. They are actually extremely strong, not just their bodies, their jaws too. Although hippos are herbivores, they have one of the strongest bites in the entire animal kingdom. It is believed that hippos have around the sixth strongest bite of all animals, only surpassed by certain sharks, alligators, crocodiles, and the orca whale. The hippo's bite force is 1,800 psi. There are many videos in which crocodiles will attempt to get a baby hippopotamus, and the entire herd of hippos will attack, usually destroying the croc. Eyewitnesses have reported a hippo crushing a crocodile with one single bite. So if this were hippo versus crocodile, we'd know who to put our money on. But the hippo's foe in this scenario is much larger, and since the hippo is found in many different places in Africa, it's another animal that they very well may come across in their day-to-day activities. Hippos tend to spend more time in the water, but they're obviously no strangers to the land. So if our pachyderms met, the elephant and the rhino, and if both became aggressive and were ready to throw down, what would happen? The Heavy Fight It's time for the heavy fight. This isn't a 12-round featherweight or welterweight boxing match. This isn't even a heavyweight fight. This is a mega heavyweight fight. Our competitors are probably only going a few rounds, but a few rounds is all they'll need. The elephant and the hippo very well may run into each other on land, and for the elephant's sake we hope they don't meet in the water. Elephants head into the water from time to time, but they sure don't move through the water as well as hippos do. A hippo will fully submerge itself underwater, and would be undetected by any elephants moving through the water, and hippos, due to their dense bones and heavy bodies, actually will sink in the water and their feet will touch the bottom of the river. In fact, they can even run along the bottom of the rivers in Africa while completely underwater. That sounds like the makings of a great sneak attack right there. But if the two met on the land, it would be a different story. They both become very territorial and aggressive during certain times, so if they came across one another and felt the other shouldn't be there, a fight could most certainly break out. Both are enormous, and both are faster than they look. An elephant doesn't really have any kind of devastating bite that it could plant on the hippo, but the hippo sure packs a bite. If it can crush a crocodile, then it can do some damage to anyone. However, the elephant is the largest land animal alive, and it has extremely thick skin, so a hippo bite would most certainly hurt, but it wouldn't be game over like it would be for the croc. And then, if a hippo is getting close enough to bite the elephant, then that means the elephant is able to use those powerful, sharp tusks. In fact, before the hippo even gets close enough to bite, the elephant may wield those 8-foot-long tusks. They're strong enough to lift and flip a lion, a lion that weighs around 500 or 600 pounds. Our hippo is going to weigh 6 times the weight of a lion easily, so could an elephant still lift and flip a hippo? Maybe, maybe not. It might prefer to use those tusks in a stabbing motion instead. The hippo is huge, bigger than most land animals, but the elephant is just going to tower over him. He will be at a significant disadvantage when it comes to size. His best bet may be to try to circle the elephant and attack him at the sides and the back, delivering powerful bites. But the elephant is just so much larger, with those gigantic legs that can kick and stomp and inflict devastating blows. The biggest hippos can get to be 5,000 pounds, and that sounds like so much, but it's one-third of the weight of our 15,000-pound elephant. The elephant just has so much of an advantage. We're not going to call it 100% in favor of the elephant, though. We give him the advantage, especially on land, knowing the hippo is aggressive and has a strong bite and still has a chance. But in the water, we give a slight edge to the hippo, knowing he can navigate it better. All in all, the African bush elephant has a stronger advantage over our modern hippo. But just to ease the ego of the beaten hippo, just for fun, let's give the hippo a trip to Sumatra. Let's say he were to meet the Sumatran elephant, the smallest living elephant, somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 pounds. Now the hippo has a much better shot. So, if a hippo wants to defeat an elephant, he'd have a better shot if he battled with the elephants in Asia. But in Africa, it's hard to topple the largest land animal on Earth. We won't say he can't do it. We're just saying maybe don't try and maybe stick to the water. The rivers of Africa are dominated by hippos. We'll give them that.