Dr. Rebecca Lewison
speaker
136 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Dr. Rebecca Lewison’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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You know, there were people throwing shrimp or other types of food. And hopefully everybody who heard that story realized that's the thing that's a danger. Like you can never throw anything into an enclosure that has a wild animal. You may think you're doing you know, something good, but they have a very strict diet.
And I think having folks being respectful, you know, being quiet is a great thing when you go see animals in captivity because it is stressful and it is important that we're mindful of what their experience is like. So I appreciate those concerns.
Thanks. This is a really important point to talk about, which is We talked about hippos being threatened from habitat loss, which is just us encroaching, developing areas around freshwater. But climate change is another real serious threat, particularly for common hippos, but probably pygmies as well. But they rely on water resources.
And a lot of the places, a lot of the projections of where we think what's going to happen, it means less rainfall, less standing water. I think it's a real threat. it's getting closer as we think about like ensuring coexistence of people and hippos into the future is the fact that the climate is changing and they are so sensitive to these climatic shifts.
So I would say when we think about like winners and losers of climate change, I would put hippos in the loser category, you know, and it's something that we absolutely, it has to be on our radar because these are the resources that they need.
Yes. The whole they kill more than anyone else. If I can do one thing in my lifetime, I feel like it's dispel that. Why? No, it's not right. It's not accurate. Stop saying it. The other flim flam, I guess, it's really just this idea of like, oh, there's so many of them. It's not true.
Like I know that they are abundant and they come in these big groups, but they're really declining in a lot of places. And even in areas where their populations may be stable, they're losing habitat, either directly from human development or because of climate change on slightly longer scales. But I think that's a really important one. And I care about elephants too.
Like I sometimes come across as like grumpy about elephants. But if I am, it's because elephants just get so much attention. And I know they have incredible behaviors and they, you know, mourn their dead and they communicate where we can't hear them and amazing things. But I think hippos have all of these things too. It's just that we can't see it and we don't know it.
But they're these incredible animals, certainly worthy of a future.
I think the worst thing is just that expectation of, oh, well, we know everything, but we don't even know how many there are. Like basic, basic things. And that's sometimes frustrating because, you know, you kind of have to start the conversation from the scratch. And so studying hippos is about studying human coexistence with them.
And I'm really hoping that the next generation of scientists can use that technology to really think about innovative ways of to protect people and protect hippos and their habitat.
I honestly am captivated by them sort of as these like organisms. Like I said, I am fascinated by all those adaptations, all these things about their body, whether it's their teeth or their stomach or their skin. It's amazing. And it feels like every time you sort of look under another part of the hippo hood, they have another incredible adaptation to being these
semi-aquatic sort of like half whale, half antelope, you know, and that's incredible to me. And I still find myself captivated. I mean, even though I've been studying this for a long time by those adaptations, by all of the things that their bodies are able to do and navigate.
I would. I know better. We don't touch wild animals in the wild, but they're incredible. So yes, I can safely say that if I happen to find one next to me that just wandered up and I could touch it safely... I absolutely would.
They probably don't give a hoot about any of that, but I would love that if that could really translate to people's passion of saying, I want to live in a world that has hippos, that has pygmy hippos, common hippos, and I want to know that they're going to be here for a really, really long time.
It's not them. Yeah, absolutely.
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