12 Baby Hippo Pictures That Will Make You Smile In Ways You Never Knew Possible
Hippos have a bad rap, for some reason they are known to have bad temper, while they look so cute and you just want to cuddle with them, most people will not dare get close to the huge animal. But what about baby hippos? When a hippo is just a little baby, there’s nothing cuter! Just take a look at these baby hippo pictures we collected below and you will agree.
Morphological comparisons have historically linked Hippopotamidae to pigs (family Suidae) and peccaries (family Tayassuidae). These groups diverged from other members of the order Artiodactyla about 45 million years ago, but molecular studies suggest that hippos and cetaceans (whales and dolphins) have an earlier common ancestor and may be more closely related. A fossil resembling today's pygmy hippo dates to about 21 million years ago, in the Miocene Epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago). Hippos eventually reached Europe and Asia, though climate changes and overhunting by humans had exterminated all species outside Africa by the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (11,700 years ago). Three species lived on Madagascar until recent times; their extinction may have coincided with the arrival of humans about 1,000 years ago.