Pablo Escobar illegally procured four hippos from Africa before relocating them to a plantation of his called Hacienda Nápoles (in the Colombian town of Puerto Triunfo).
In 1993, law enforcement killed the famous drug lord during an arrest attempt before making the costly decision not to remove the hippos from his estate.
Instead, Pablo’s ‘Cocaine Hippos’ were allowed to integrate into the wild, and what happened next would completely disrupt the region’s ecosystem.
Local officials did not anticipate that the “Cocaine Hippos” would become far more sexually proactive than their predecessors from Africa as they procreated at an alarming rate.
Additionally, the 4,000-pound semiaquatic mammals drastically changed the food chain by practically obliterating the fish supply in their new habitat and contaminating the area’s water systems with their toxic feces.
To make matters worse, these hippos don’t have a natural predator in the area, which could help balance the biocommunity.
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