Was the pygmy hippo a phantom animal?
The pygmy hippopotamus is a small hippo living in the forests of Liberia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere in West Africa. It was described as a new species in the mid-19th century from skulls and other remains, but because it lives alone deep in the forest, almost no one had seen one alive, and for a long time it was a phantom animal whose existence was doubted.
How it was discovered and confirmed
The German animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck sent the explorer Hans Schomburgk to Liberia to obtain a living pygmy hippo. Schomburgk searched from around 1910 and finally succeeded in capturing living animals. The pygmy hippos brought to Europe caused a great sensation, and their existence was widely accepted.
What we know today
The pygmy hippo weighs about 200 kg, only about a tenth of a common hippo. It does not form herds and feeds on grass and fruit in the forest at night. Together with the okapi and the giant panda, it is counted among the “world’s three great rare animals,” and it is an endangered species with an estimated few thousand left in the wild. In Japan, too, it has become a popular animal, with zoo babies going viral on social media.
