Pablo Escobar’s Problematic Cocaine Hippos

at the sky and drove right like I do. Everyone. Okay, let's just imagine that you have a special car that can drive like a rocket right, so you you'd be surprised at what the FOURD escape. Let's say your FOURD escape wants to really escape. You drive straight up, it would take you one hour to get to space, which means it takes less time to get to space than would to drive across l A. Wow. Wow, so he did exactly. You know, it just puts his stuff into perspective.

It's an hour long car drive. Come to go, a long car drive, have an afford escape? Yeah, I guess, good job. Oh and you took Captain Kirk with you. Okay, so you know it's also ridiculous. Besides all that tell me Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippo. Now, if you're wondering, cocaine, hippos are not actually made of cocaine, but they were paid with it or paid for with it're paid in cocaine,

You're paid in cocaine. They're cocaine warriors if you If you go online right, just type in the words Pablo Escobar and hippos, you'll see a bunch of headlines and like there be things like Pablo Escobar why scientists want to kill Colombia's hippos And they're like, what what did Pablo Escobar too? That makes like the worst mad live exactly. Dudude Bro has been dead for almost thirty years that people are still blaming the state of Columbia on him.

I mean this case, it airs a direct connection. Yeah, I know he's pretty much less well, he could be on the island, but Tupac. Yeah yeah, maybe that's a private island. Did it is a fun island. He's a lot of fast folks, a problematic island, super fun. Okay, so you're ready for a very very bizarre story about a group of hippos who have recently been legally determined to be people under US laws. Right, this is all

the same story. Okay. Our story starts in sub Saharan Africa. Yeah, just a bunch of hippos have been minding their own chilling in a lake in Africa. When they are abducted and they're brought to New Orleans, You're like, wait, what, Well, soon after they're in New Orleans and they don't stay there long. They've become part of an exotic animal zoo, constructed to amuse one of the world's richest men, the infamous cocaine cartel leader. You know him. I love him,

the one and only Pablo Escobar. I love not really, but it's more fun to say it that way. Now, the animals that Pablo Escobar, you know, the ones that we are now collectively going to be calling cocaine hippos. They have become this unofficial symbol of Colombia's sense of itself. It's modern post Escobar sense of its off, and it's also kind of reminiscent of their strange and violent history. It's a way of recognizing who they are and who

they are becoming. Right, the cocaine hippos recommend they kind of represent that transition. I swear it sounds wild, right, but you have to understand that Colombia is also the place that gave us magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marchez. So having cocaine hippos be a symbol of the country it's really not that far fetched for Columbia now. It is. It's an element of magical realism. Now. However, though, at the moment, the government of Columbia they want to kill

these hippos. That's not cool. Well, they also may want to castrate them. They haven't made up their mind, so they have options. Yeah, exactly, f Mary kill Mary, castrate Yeah, I like that game. So there is a bunch of stuff that is going to be swirling around this. So there's basically Pablo Escobar, there's a Colombian government, and there's gonna be the U. S government. But there's going to

be essentially a fight over are these hippos people? So why people care if these cocaine hippos are people, Well, that's because the US and the Colombian government basically orphaned these hippos in their joint anti narcotics operation to take down Pablo Escobar. You see, the cops killed Pablo Escobar, and that left these hippos stranded in Colombia where they have remained and really proliferated. Just I'm talking like happy, happy hippos. They are hungry, hungry, they're horny, horny hippos.

So you're ready to hear the full story of Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos. You bet. This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always murder free and a guaranteed one hundred percent ridiculous. Okay, it's Forbes comes out with this list of the richest people in the world. On that list is this ultra

wealthy Colombian named Pablo Escobar. His fortune is estimated at thirty billion dollars at the time, which in today's money about sixty six billion, which makes him richer than the queen at the time, Queen of England. That is wow. Yeah, right, there's a lot of money. But you know, well, cocaine is a hell of a business, not just a hell of a drug, So there's a lot of money in it, I hear. Yeah, No, it's a good one, Nick, if

you're looking to make money cocaine. Yeah, that's what I would tell people, Like, look, young people, just major in cocaine. It's a growth and it's total growth. So Paulo Escobar he takes all his cocaine profits and he buys just

a ton of stuff. I'm talking. He had multiple ranches because you know, South American men have like a thing for ranches and like the bulls and like the that inherited Spanish legacy of what are you gonna do when you're wealthy is to get and stancia rancho up hastienda, right, So he wants to get his He gets multiple ones. He also buys a private island called Le Grande, and on La le Grande he puts in la cassa grande, which you know, it just means the big guest, which

is ironic. In this big house, he has three hundred guest rooms. So it's basically a hotel. No, you gotta see this thing. Yeah, it's basically a hotel. I guess you could describe it that way, but it's like, um, I don't know, like a medieval monastery in terms when you look at it, where it's like really long, like from the when you look at the building, it's like white stone. It's these like you know, oval windows. It's just like a really strikes like a boutique hotel. Yeah, sure,

let's go with that. It's a boutique hotel, something you find on like monsierrat or comes right. I don't know, I've never been there. But in each of these three hundred guest rooms, he's got like all gold shower heads. Oh for three hundred all gold shower has. Most of the time they're not being used. Yeah, you have to it right there. So now let's see. He also owned about let's see, you think, fifteen private jets because you know, you've got to move that cocaine and that money around.

Gets six helicopters, a fleet of cars because he and his brother loved to race cars. So they just had like every fast car you could name, multiple times over, and three whole pairs of pants exactly, and two pairs of socks because he's an efficient business. I got we wear one, you wash one. So Pablo Escobar, he's made this fortune smuggling cocaine into America because America loves cocaine.

And now meanwhile, he's making so much money that he is like, he's writing off two billion dollars each year. Just two rats, two rats, the rats, because he's putting money in bags and burying it. He's putting money in like rooftops and hiding it up in the rafters. He's putting money every where he can that he thinks that the cops won't find because he can't just go to the bank exactly, he can't go to the A c.

M And just feed cash in. Yeah, it's got to launder that money before it can be used, right, So the rats they go, oh, thanks, bro, you made us some money. Snack, and they would just go and eat through these bags of money, and they eat so much each year that he has to write off two billion dollars. Yes, and he's just like cool, not a problem, just writting it off to the rats. Keep them rats happy. There's still apparently there's like all these rumors that there's Pablo

Escobars millions or rather billions buried all throughout Columbia. People constantly go and try to find it. And the government of Columbia has found a bunch of money, and these like barrels because the money will rot if it's allowed. If it's if, you bury it and most likely rot unless you do something to basically minimize the moisture. So if you can, you know, her medically seal the money, you can have a pretty good chance that money would still be there and not off all rotted. So they

should have invested in digging it up. They should have invested in a food saver vacuum sealer. That's you know what. Public Escobar needed you on his team. I would have been so helpful. God, he probably would still be alive. I'm kind of a logistic scale. Yeah, So let's just say you were Pablo Escobar and you had a huge sum of billions of dollars that you've made off of the cocaine trade. What would you want to buy with billions of dollars? Like? Whatever you want? Pretty much obviously right,

you can do whatever you want. Now, you don't have to do something. I know you think of something noble and charity. Could you imagine how could you imagine like you could wipe out people's medical debt? Oh my god, like or like student loans. So let's go something. I'll reframe the question. What would you buy or build exclusively for your enjoyment, something that would be a selfish guilty pleasure. Mm hm, you know me, that's really hard. I know. That's why I had to reframe the question just to

even get you there, um some custom made Adidas. Oh you know what I would, Well, it's not I can't even think. I guess I think of like you know, oh, you'd build like this, me using a huge mansion and like so but I don't know if i'd populate it with like my family so that I haven't like enough use for the space. Otherwise it feels wasteful. I don't

like wastefulness. So like if I if I built like this gigantic mansion, there'd be all these rooms, and I guess you could just tell people to come hang out whenever, but like other you build an informal hotel. Yeah, I kind of would, but then I don't like to be around people a lot. So what if it's just like a mansion, but with all I don't know, not so

many bedrooms, but like a really nice chef's kitchen. But then I'd be like, I have all this money, I could be like serving food to people who are hungry, And so you build market I sound like such a goody two shoes jerk saying that. But I mean, you have a hard time spending money on myself. I'm such a jerk, you know. And so I'm not being fake

about it. I just can't make a like I don't like waste and I don't like selfishness and so and you know what, I'm selfish and that doing really nice stuff like that, that kind of self sacrifice makes me feel really good. That's why I do it, Like not why I do it, but it feels really good to help someone out, and like, even if you have to give it yourself, like, it's a really good feeling. So it's kind of how I get high on life. I take it back, you would not dare I paid attention,

and no, I would be the worse. I think you guys should not do this. You're throwing your lives away and wasting this money. Please. Yeah, I'm talking about of buying the cocaine exactly to get them back into schooling. Yeah. Well, Carlo Escobar was not hung up with the moral quandaries that you had, and he decided to get himself something nice, which was an exotic zoo. So he's like that nice think of those animal I have a big problem with,

like people not letting wild be wild. Problem. Well, he had enough land that, as you will hear, he let them go as you would say wild ish, maybe fairal where they're from. That's the difference, Like not at all. I can't relate. Until the animals are just in charge and they get to do what they want, We're all gone. Oh is there a timeline on that? Do we know that? I'm working on it? Okay, I got my car running

out in the driveway. I'm working on it because I haven't been getting the newsletter and I would really like to hear about when that's going to happen. The Pablo Escobar zoo is I know, the unfortunate for you going to be sound gross and and hangous for the animals, and it was, but it was also a beautiful place to look at if you didn't have any issues about exploitation of the animals. So you have this like, um, you know, well, it's kind of a thing for people

who have a bunch of money. Like El Chopo. He had a zoo too, right, and he was he was in Guadalahar. He had a little come with the little trains like you know, like your nephew likes to ride around on right, so here looking on with the little trains, and he'd ride around his zoo just the head all right, okay, so picture the head of the Cinelo cartel riding around his little train like he's got like his little conductor's hat on and he's pointing out, those are my my

rocks over there. Because they want this like connect, they want to control something and they want to show excess. But then also it's very sort of infantilizing, right, Like it's they're going back to their childhoods, and you think, like, if you're gonna abandon all sorts of morality, there's probably some trauma at an early age. And I have taken this away from being funny and ridiculous, professor. But over

here anyway, we're talking about murder his cartel leaders. I don't care if you just psychologize him to the point that they are not funny people. They weren't funny people to hurt people. Hurt people exactly, who are you? Paul little Pablito who had his like you know, tender heartbroken at a young age, and we don't know about he went and bought a zoo to cheer himself up and try to restore his We bought a zoo, he met am and got together. So just okay, what's what's just relief?

Relieve some of the tension. Here. I want you to picture the zoo. I'm gonna walk you up to the zoo and into it. Okay, picture Pablo Escobar's secret estate. You I've led you there on this jungle path. We've arrived on a small plane and now we're walking up to it and you see we are Okay, just to put you into place, we are ninety miles east of Metalline, in the land where flowers grow in abundance. And you have this land, it's it's right basically at the equator,

so there's almost no season. It's it's just always kind of spring like. It's just a really the flowers are always in blossom. That's why so many flowers grow there and they get shipped around the world is because of this climate. Right, sounds incredible. It's beautiful. The trees are filled with tropical birds. The air is warm, sweet with like the fruity smell of the blossoms of the flowers. Right,

it's just idyllic. You know they're on a seaplane and where you wearing short shorts like magnum p I, baby, you know what are you kidding me? Come on now, I got on the Hawaiian shirt, the shorts shorts, bust. I just need this from my mental picture, all right, So yeah, keep picture that. So we come up to the Estancia that you ranch, right, it's in front of you as you approach. As we approach, you see a small airplane. It's on top of a gate, you know.

And this gate is like one of those South American styles where it's just a you right into the ground. So at that gate there's a Piper super cub and a Piper Supercub is a small plane like a cessnum and it is balanced there. And this plane is a replica of Pablo Escarbar's first plane that he used to smuggle cocaine into the US. Right, yes, exactly. This started it all once you're about to see the wonders before

you all started with this plane. Okay. So Pablo he has this overarching like basically catch phrase he's known for plato o plomo, right, and that means silver or lead, Yeah exactly, And that is the attitude that has afforded all of this deca, so we're going to keep that in mind. But this place of Pablo is named Hacienda Napoles, the Naples the state is designed to look like a sixteenth century uh like ranch house that is built by the Conkys, or would have been built by the conquistadors,

and his zoo is part of this ranch. So he's got this beautiful conquistador style home, all of these animals. And in the sense that this is something that is designed to be impressive, it's supposed to impress obviously his underlings, but anybody who comes there and he his cocaine associates, they're supposed to tell them I have the power of the state, because typically who has zoos the state, the

state has zoos. Well with with my man Escobar, He's like, look, I want people to know through my exotic animals that I too can keep a life alive, exotic life where it shouldn't be, which is essentially what a zoo is. Right now, his collection of animals starts with that one singular desire and will take a quick break and I will tell you about what his collection looks like and how and why it included the cocaine hippos. I cannot wait. Okay,

now you're ready to hear about Pablo Escobar zoo. We've gotten you to the gates, We've told you about the animals, but now we're going to see them and meet them. You're ready, yes, okay. Picture ostriches running loose on the Colombian plane. Picture giraffes gathered by the tropical trees. Picture elephants just often too the distance. Antelopes running in herds, All kinds of exotic birds, peacocks, various other exotic birds, all armed with semi amatic weapons. Yes, because they gotta

keep Pablo safe. Yeah. And then there are also dinosaur statues, but the dinosaur statues were built from real dinosaur bones, so they just dinosaur, yeah basically. And then he had like also a statuary garden with like these giant octopuses doing like weird octopus dance stuff. He was in the art. I want to go to a natural history museum and be like, I love your dinosaur statues. That's an actual dinosaur.

This is a beautiful statu I mean statutes like he'd skinned that he covered them in like a physical out in the dinosaur the bones. You couldn't see them all, like they're like in there. So it's like it's got like a boam, it's exactly to look like a dinosaur, but it has real dinosaur bones. Now did he put the feathers on it like they're supposed to have had.

I don't know if he was that accurate. I don't think he wants because I don't even know that if we knew, actually know, because the Jurassic Park would have been coming out, right, So the research probably cooked up making dinosaurs. Yeah, just too busy, Yeah, with arts and crafts and cocaine, a single like trickle of blood coming out of one nostril on the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs all have one long cokemail just one man, and like necklaces

with tiny spoons. Yeah, little things. I'm showing how old I am with like the oh you're late seven cocaine totally as a child. That's what started talking about Frank Serpico and the dirty New York Police. So now amongst these exotic animals of Pablo Escarbar there were the aforementioned cocaine hippos. Now they started out, there were four of them at the start. That's when we got when he got those hippos from New Orleans, there were four of them, right,

there are three females, one male. The adams to a zoo and then Boo comes around. Pablito gets gunned down by the Colombian government and now we've got these stranded hippos. But the hippos have been humping and eating and producing poop at an extraordinary amount. And so now they have just basically started to take over their environment. They're little, you know, a micro environment, and they have started to

change it. They have spread from the lake where they started into the local rivers and they are now four different lakes. And then they started to range the hippos like they get so bad that they actually spread out to Now you'll find them like a hundred and fifty miles away. What Yeah, and they're nocturnal, so the hippos are charging through Columbia at night, so I mean it's

on their hind legs, under cover of darkness. So the reason why they were there is the Colombian government when they killed Pablo, they went and they seized up all the other animals. Right, they take the elephants. The drafts were like, hey, Bogata zoo. You want to bring them on, Yeah, but like they could get any takers for the hippos. You were like, no, I'm I'm good on hippos, and we're good. Plus it's a pain to move them. They're heavy and you can't tranquilize em easy. So they're like

you know, and they're also hungry, hungry exactly. So they're like Colombian governments like, you know what, let's just leave them here. They'll build, they'll die, you know, because Nage'll take care of it. We don't have to do anything. Well, they were wrong. The hippos were like, man, y'all didn't even know how much we love Colombia. Oh, son, y'all messed up. Now we are cocaine exactly. You can't stop us. Pablo picked us for really good reasons. So here's the

actual scientific reasons why Pablo did them. A solid is one, Colombia's wetlands have no natural predators for a hippo, nothing's gonna kill them except for old age to the weather is ideal, and but it's not because like they like, you know, the the springtime weather that you responded to. It's that they don't have droughts. In Columbia that they do in sub Saharan Africa, so you don't have to

deal with that wet season, dry season and stuff. They just have constant water, which means constant food and constant humping. So they're just sitting there eaten, pumping, sleeping all the time. And a female can like within like you know, I think it's forward four and a half years or seven years, they can start I think it seven years actually they can start making babies. So what that means is basically once these hippo streity going, once they reach puberty, yeah,

hippo puberty, they start basically knocking. Even though they're all one genetic population, you know, but because there were the three females in the one male that I guess there's enough variety that they've been very successful. So they've just been making incest uous hippos for decades now and they're up to about a dred and twenty. So they're just out there knocking boots. Yeah, well they love you know,

they got water, they got food. So what's that you don't know offhand with the gestation period is the gestation period for hippo I do not long. I would imagine this long only because they are of the same family of whales, and whales have a really long gestation period,

so I'm just guessing, I don't know Genus Biggins. There are pigs and and uh what called pigs and whales were have a common ancestor with the hippo, which is like this rum nata group, and then they go into the water and then they become fully aquatic as whales and becomes cetaceans, and then the hippo stays semi aquatic that keeps its toes a due exactly. So these these cocaine hippos, they're just rocking off in Columbia doing super well.

But this is bad for Colombia's other wildlife because of how much the hippo's poop the hippos and I know it sounds like a joke, right, but it's like hippos their poop is turns out to be a really bad anaerobic problem. It basically pulls oxygen out of the water, so the available oxygen for the fish is not there. So that means if you were fish, and then if you're a fish, means if your otters, and then also if you're manatees, so these hippos are threatening to basically

kill manatees. That's not cool, right, Everyone loves manatees, and like people are like, bro, come on now, like what's up with these cocaine hippos and their hippo crap? And exactly the manatees are like, you know, these super gentle sea cows. And everyone's like, oh, y'all like the new one. Huh, y'all got that new model. We're just over here. But what would you by the way, just you know, off handedly, cocaine hippos. I keep saying the term what would you

have fixed cocaine to? What animal would you put cocaine in front of if you had a choice? Cocaine? Uh, what's something that's like I think it would be about for comedic effect or like in real life. I don't think in real life use this is like you know, it's a nickname that's associative to Pablo Escobar. I just mean, like, what would be a funny animal to refer to as a cocaine This a cocaine that, like the cocaine art vark. I think amster cocaine. Amster cocaine will not get off

the hamster wheel. I think that is just you just described cocaine had like anyone who dugs code cocaine amster. Yeah, that's the new name for people. You see some you see someone, I'll toot it up. You're like, look at that coke cocaine hamster ever there? And then we shorten it and we just refer to them as hamsters. How

will we know which ones are which? Though? Well, because if I if, if I'm at like a rock and roll show and I come out of the bathroom and I go, there's a bunch of hamsters in there, would immediately sharing a stall and I hear some snorts, You're not going to be like literal hamsters. You're like, oh my god, what why is there a hobbit trail in there? Is it broken? This club has a habit trail that

runs all through the bathroom system. It's amazing. So I think that Zaren context clues context was okay, fair enough, fair enough? So how about this a more serious question? What would you do with a fast growing population of cocaine hippos and you had to get rid of them, organize them in revolt, have them leave themselves out of their exploitation, completely, break the chance, take over the cities. Yeah, if I had to get rid of them, I don't know.

It's not my it's not my business. The government of Colombia has been taking that approach for a while. They've tried recently a more hands on approach. So basically, for the longest time they just blame Pablo Escobar. They're like, oh, it's pablos hippos. Anything they do, it's pablos. But then that didn't work after a while. Yes, he's dead, yeah exactly. After then they god, like ten fifteen years later, people like, bro, those are not pablos hippos anymore. I mean they are,

but y'all have been letting them wild out. So the descendants of public exactly probably never met any of these hippos. So the Colombians are like, okay, well we can go through some options, and so they basically have tried most of the options you would think of. So let's start with a couple of them, right, Like, you got this invasive species and you're like, well, well, how do we get rid of them? Well, we brought them here, we could just send them back. So the first idea of

the old idea send them back to Africa. Had that one that one met with about the same responses the first time they tried it, because it was like, that'll be too expensive. How are we going to do that? We want to do it, but how are we going to do it? It's like a whole nightmare on the Hippo star line, exactly, the Black Hippo Star. The thing is, it's like those those dudes, those hippos aren't yeah exactly, not anymore. Yeah, So it's like, y'all got some South

American hippos. I don't know what to take speak Spanish. Well. Then the other issue is that the Colembian government has had to start to solve this problem because now the cartel is smuggling these baby hippos. They go and have ducked the baby hippos and smuggle them out of Colombia. So the cycle has come full circle and the cartel is now they're selling them overseas. Whoever wants a baby hippo. They're like, we got some baby hippos. What y'all need?

Billionaires who have too much money and they're like, what can I put in my palatial estate about baby hippo hippos? And so people like yo, I know somebody I can hook you up with that you want to go out on a kilo and two baby hippos like kid, their kid gets a hippo for its fourth birthday and the kids riding the hippo on the grass until it loses interest and they're like, he did you feed the hippo today?

Where's your where's your hippo? Becky? Did you If you get me a hippo, I promise I'll take care of it. Hippos are violent. Oh yeah, that's the other thing. Yeah, they naps that kid in half. No more than any other wildlife in Africa. That includes the king cobra, the lion, the elephants, rhinos, all those hyena. None of them get close down. Many of the hippo hippos just will snap you all neck. So proud of them. So there have been some other approaches. The Colinbian government that came up

has come up with. One of them was the always the old fashioned well we could eat them because well this this was a real thing. This came up and basically this this hippo died of semi natural causes semi natural s to suicide. He ran into an electrified fence and so it was like half cooked. It's not semi natural causes because no one actively killed the hippo. The

kip hippo wandered into a kill environment. I don't know what to tell you, but it's not natural because it's not like the natural electrified fences like eels get together and like hanging from trees just to like experience. People like, let somebody come through, come through, come through, Come on. It's like a hazing thing in the jungle of these Okay, so we'll call it. We'll call it a negligent death. Okay, negligent homicide. Death of this hippo occurred and the locals

were like, well, it's it's already kind of cooks. What what do you think it taste like? So they divided it up and then they like you know, partitioned it up amongst each other, and then we went to town. They were like, that's so good hippo meat. I mean, if another one comes through here and it gets killed on Bob's fence, it's like when you're driving down the street and your windows are down and you smell someone barbecuing. You're like, oh, that's good, that's really good. Should I

go and pretend I'm a relative. That was the neighbors with hippo. They were like, oh, that kind of it's got some real hits, a little different kind of comes out to the nose and says hello. So this they have called me. Government's like, hey, is this is something we can do? We heard some locals that we're eating some electrified hippo meat. Is that something we could push

off on the people? And biologists is like, well yeah, I mean there's a high fat content, it could probably marble well, and maybe if you paired it with local spices it could be a really good meal. Which did How about you? Do you remember when Louisiana tried to do this with Nutria with that giant beaver and they're like, okay, people, we tried to get you to shoot them, and you wouldn't do that. What if would you just eat them?

Let's come up with some recipes, people, and they put out a state like a cookbook for Nutria and nibble on them, tiny little real exactly get some of that rib meat. Work real hard for it. It's sort of like a cornish game hyn a Louisiana game. Hyna. Well, you're good at cooking, how would you prepare a hippo. I don't know. I feel like it's in my mind because you said this is like a high fat cun But I don't believe it's like marble. Do you probably

have to get through a fat layer. Yeah, I imagine it's it's more like whales where you have like blubber or it's a condensed I mean, then I'll use the techniques I use when cooking whales. Yeah, okay, than never mind. I mean I bet you could get like a hippo steak somehow, like get some sort of because they're strong, very very so you get you tapped into that muscle though. Oh probably. And I don't know if if it's something you kind of got to like stew to soften, got

to tender eye, it probably. Yeah. I don't know any of these things. I'm just making this stuff up. Hippo tacos, hippo tacos. You know, I can make anything into a taco. About talent, people like what is Elizabeth like? Well, if you can make anything into a taco and she loves the television show nine one one, Yeah, those are thats pretty much all I think. That's full stop. That's my autobiography. So Colombia is like, um, well we've tried all these

different approaches. Well we could always do the old well, you know, stand by just shoot them. We could just go out and hunt them and shoot them. And the people are like, bro, bro, you canna let God sort them out. That is not the approach. They're like, well, hear us out. So when they had a like this rampaging hippo going around in the rural back country, the locals were like, help us up as we got this

hippo is just rampaging in the back country. And the Columbian government's like, okay, we got you son, We'll send out like the killed team. So he send out to you like the army, and the army goes out there. You know, A K forty seven is the whole bit. And uh, they hunt down this hippo, they kill it, and then they make the mistake of taking a picture with it. Yep, they know the whole group. There's like, you can find this picture of Peppe the hippo dead,

surrounded by Colombian army folks all smiling. And when that photo hit the internet, what do you think happened? Angry? Yeah, so a bunch of people got pissed and it was so bad that the Colombians protest. It was an international incident online. The Columbian people. They went down and protested in front of the environmental ministry and Bogata. They're like, y'all can't do this to Pepe ended any of the other hippos. This is not gonna be cool. People are like, oh, well, okay, well,

I guess we can't come back to Africa. We can't eat them, we can't shoot him. What are we gonna do? Miriam? No good guests though that came up with the last one. Castrat um ouch exactly. You don't even have tests. So I will explain to you after the short break how the answer of castration also is failing. Okay, So if I had to ask you, Elizabeth, why do you think it would be difficult to castrate to hippo? Well, it's like there do they have four h like the agricultural

It's like it's like homest harvest hippo. Yeah. I think that's like they teach the kids to wrastle down the hippos. And I don't think their nuts. No, I don't know. I don't think they have that I don't. I would imagine that it's well again, I'm going to go back to the angry, angry hippo that they're a very big animal and they're very angry. So that is a good read. And they don't have like rodeo pens in the rivers where they live in lakes. You got to get them

out of the lake. I don't know. You know what, why don't you tell me? Well? These are all you pretty much nailed the basics. Ones, big animal, mean animal can be mean when confronted, or it's a territorial animal. You get into their territory, the act that way, and then lives in muddy water. So how are you gonna get You gonna get in there the water and put it like a strap on Nathan and helicopter amount. You're gonna get in there with a tractor and drag them out.

You have to give to the animal, right, So they're like, well that's difficult. But then there's something even more difficult. Hippos are sexually dimorphic. Yeah, it's actually dimorphic means you can't tell a male hippo from a female hippo. Hippo is essentially a genderless animal like a Kendall. No, no, not like that. It's not smooth front, but it turns out it is. It's like they have, you know, the

actual sexes. There are a male and female hippop, but you but looking at him, there are no there's no descended genitalia, there is no coloration difference, there's no size difference. They look identical, and their genitals you cannot parse from looking at them as if it's male or female because it looks like smooth Kendall. When you like everybody, Okay, I got I'll give that to you. Though, hippo looks like a smooth Kendall. I'll give you out points. That's

kind of cute that there's no difference. Yeah, no, right, it's not the only Okay, not to be delicate, but like, how do they how do they do their uh reproductive business, their muddy business. You know what happens is apparently the going as the testies of a male hippo are up in the body, like up like ovaries. They are like

way up high in the body. So if you're gonna try to find those, you can't reach them, but the penis is going to be able to get out and you know, do all the business you want for like a sexual interaction between you and miss hippo. So they're like anies. Everybody's in it. It's kind of like a dog whether the penis comes out, but like a lot of animals have a penis bone, so that kind of like helps it pop out. Like the human beings, we don't have a penis bone. We have like a ligament

and some blood pressure to make our penis works. But there's when they get excited, you know, pops out. It's like one of those birthday party horns or you it's hippo penis so and I don't know if they're like horses where they're like huge and hung or if they're like you know, smaller animals, but they have like if you look at like a boor a pig, they're close relative you'll see the balls from behind, right, not the

case for the hippop. So if you're trying to castrate them and you can't find the gont, you have to make difficult so you have to tranquilize them surgery. And then if you now, let's say you have this tranquilized hippo, which is by the way, a very difficult animal to tranquilse because it's so thick and so heavy, and they don't know how much to give it. Thick th i

c c oh double c thick that hippop thick. But some of these thick hippos that you can't tranquilize, they will get angry if they wake up in the middle of the surgery, like your hand all up on their go and adds that are up in their body cavity problems. Sterilize them, good question. There actually are chemical castration. So chemical castration means you put the sterilizing agent into their food and if you do that, then you just have to put the food out. They eat the food. Food

gets them sterilized. Or you can do the other way, which is basically you put the food in a pen. They come up to the pen, you don't close the door, they eat the food, they leave. You put the food in the pen, they come up to the pen, they don't close the door, and eventually you close the door and then you tranquilize them in the pen. That's the other approach. So you've got two approaches. You can either you know, feed them something, or you can go up

and tranquilize them after tricking them. Now, the big deal with that is is it costs about fifty dollars to try to do most of these efforts I've described, So the cheapest approach is to turn to the Americans who have offered up free sterilizing agents at the Department of Agriculture invented. They're like, hey, bro, we got this for you. So we're like, this will be cheap and easy. You

just give the hippos this. But people you know around the world, animal rights activists, Hippo Lovers United, They're like, you can't do that to the hippos. And remember the people of Columbia they see it as like a national emblem, so they don't want these hippos mistreated. So and also the hippos themselves, you know, they are a charming animal there. Even though they are really aggressive. People don't think of

them that way. They think of them in the Disney terms of being like in the two twos and dancing a hippo is this it's not seen as an aggressor. So people aren't siding with the manatees in this issue. You would think that the animal rights activists will be able to make the case. But they're like, say, the hippos. So people are like, well, why well, how are we going to save these hippos and people? Animal rights activists are like, I've got it. Will turn hippos into people.

Well not exactly, not like scientifically into people, just legally into people because if you want to castrate them chemically, and you're gonna use this weird US government sterilyzing agent, now he don't just put them on like the Megan's List. So I understand. What happens is they take these hippos and they give them personhood right and the reason why to do that. It's just like corporations, it's exactly. So no hippos and corporations all have more legal rights than

I do. I love this. So the hippos they this this drug that they're trying to give them right, it's called going to colne like like gone going ads, but like not going ads, like going to Colm right, So like g O N A c O N. Yes, going

like comic con comicon for gonads. So this stuff I will not attend that it's been it's been designated to be not good for hippos because it's for like you know, I don't know, like elk and horses and native North American wildlife to people like this is not designed for hippos, so the animal rights actors or you can't do that. Columbia is like, well, we got these free drugs, so we're thinking about doing it. So they give the hippos,

they go to court, they file a lawsuit. So there's like animal rights activists, they file lawsuits and they've been doing this for a while, Like there's one guy, Luis Domingo Gomez Maldonado. He's been like really key and leading the fight. So by giving these animals personhood, then they have to be respected and they have to be treated humanely.

That's the whole point, right, So that's kind of neat, But this idea is based on the This idea of giving them personhood is based on a larger environmental approach that has been very successful. Australia has given personhood to rivers, the Colombians have given personhood to parts of the Amazon based on the Amazon rainforest. So this is actually an

expanding model. So these these cocaine hippos may signal the forefront of a new legal fight that we can possibly say things we love on this planet and maybe even save things like rivers and trees by treating them humanely like people. So ultimately this could be a very helpful step along the way for us all living better. So we maybe owe a debt of gratitude of these cocaine hippos for making us treat each other and animals more humane. And they too can go into bankruptcy over an ambulance

ride exactly. So, now that uh Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos are legally considered people under American law, and which was the court case that was like in the news re cently we have the standpoint to work with. But what I want to know is if you could give and grant personhood to any animal, which way animal would you pick? Bears and wolves? Bears and wolves to save them or just because you want them to be able to like chill in places with you. I want them to be

able to like go to school embedded themselves. Now I want to hang out with them, no, protect them. Yeah, I like that. I think I think the idea of person is actually a really cool idea. I was talking to an indigenous activist from Australia about this and that's what I first learned, that they turned a river into a person. That's like, what that sounded silly at first,

but really it's kind of genius under our construction of law. Yeah, I mean it is, but it's also it's difficult to get your head around in terms of like the definition of personhood and the idea of will and its ridic action that around. But there was also one other thing I gotta tell you that I learned while I was researching about these hippos. There was something all the American Hippo Bill, right, and it's just as fun as it sounds.

There's his representative down from Louisiana. He's like, you know what we need to do to save America's bring us over some hippos. Because everyone's like, what what is this dude talking about? Why is he even in Congress? And how prescient that the Louisiana is going to be supprising

later on? Way to bring it around? Yeah, you're welcome these Uh this bill that just put forward, the American Hippo Bill, it hits the floor of Congress, and the bill is quote, will authorize the importation and release of hippopotamuses into the values of Louisiana. Now, why would they want to release hippos unto the bias Louisiana. It wasn't to fight gators, if that's what you were thinking. It was to eat this like unwanted plant that was clogging

up the waterway. So they're like, if we can get to eat that plant, and then you know we can do next. We can eat the hippos. So they're like, fight invasive species with invasive species, and then we'll eat the invasive species. Solved. And the reason why they came up with this idea is because they needed meat. So that's how they tried to get it right. So they put this. There's a huge push and I'm talking Washington Post is writing about this. New York Times is writing

about this. Teddy Roosevelt is a huge fan. He's out there. He's just left the presidency, so he's like still a major figure in nineteen ten and he's sitting there going around. You know, America needs what he calls, by the way, lake cow bacon. That was lake cow bacon. Yeah, that was part of the like sales campaign to make it like a hip thing. We need eat fat content. Yeah, exactly,

delicious friends, that stuff on electric fence. I'm telling you, boy, get you some eels and keep in mind this American hippo bill. It almost passed in the end. We were just a few votes shy of America's adding lake cow bacon to all of our diets. Oh my god, it would have been like in school lunches. Yeah, instead of like like pepperoni pizza on Friday, it's hippo pizza. And then you'd have Peta dressing up like hippo's and oh yeah, laying around in front of a whole food screaming at people.

So what do you think is ridiculous takeaway for the cocaine hippo story. Um, I think our ridiculous takeaway is that if you feel the impulse to show out and show off, think about what the ramifications of those actions may be. So if it involves another living thing that you're treating is just an object, it's probably not a good idea. So if you want to like flex on everyone and be like I got hippos, I got dinosaur bones, come on now, like, you know, think about the long

term effectually, got a plan. I gotta think forward otherwise you know what you are ridiculous? Wait, to go. I think my ridiculous takeaway is, look, if you take something out of Africa and then it does somewhere else, does really well somewhere else, don't get mad at us. Thank you, all right, I'm just I'm just staying a plane. Thank you for joining us. I'm Elizabeth Dutton, I'm Sara and bent it. I just love that. I don't know, right. So, you can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both

Twitter and Instagram. You've got a tip for us about a ridiculous crime you'd like to hear about. Hit us up. You want to confess to one. Definitely hit us up. Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Sounds good, See around, and we're back next time with more particularly list crimes. But Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by the Chief Game Warden Dave Kuston, researched by our resident big game fact hunter,

Merissa Brown. The theme song is by Don Carlos, Thomas Lee and Travis el Papo Dutton. Executive producers are Ben who Wants Some Lake Cow Bacon Bowling and Old Sammy Is Some Hippo Stakes. Brown. Ridiculous Crime is a production of I heart Radio. Four more podcasts My heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.