How A Notorious Criminal's Pet Hippos Are Still A Huge Problem Decades Later
发布时间 2023-04-14 14:00:23 来源
摘要
Pablo Escobar: kingpin and... animal lover? In the 1980s, Escobar's zoo at Hacienda Nápoles took shape, filled with exotic animals, including hippos. The zoo was only functional for about 10 years before the Colombian government claimed it, but during its heyday, Escobar allowed locals to explore it for free. He even bussed children to the zoo.
Today, however, those hippos are causing quite the uproar in Colombia. While hippos aren't native to South America, that hasn't stopped them from making a home in Colombia, wandering away from Hacienda Nápoles, and multiplying quickly. These hippos haven't hurt anyone yet, but it's likely only a matter of time before these sometimes dangerous animals get too close to humans for comfort.
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In the 1980s, drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's zoo at Hacienda Nupalus was filled with exotic animals, including hippos.
在1980年代，毒枭巴勃罗·埃斯科巴在努帕卢斯农场建立的动物园里充满了许多珍稀动物，包括河马。
Today, however, the descendants of those hippos, which aren't native to South America, have made a home in Colombia, and not everyone is happy about it.
然而，现在那些非南美本地的河马的后代在哥伦比亚安家落户，不过并不是所有人都对此感到高兴。
So today, we're examining how Pablo Escobar's pet hippos are still a huge problem decades later.
今天，我们要探讨巴勃罗·埃斯科巴的宠物河马数十年后仍然带来巨大问题的原因。
But before we get started, be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Channel. And if you want to leave a comment and let us know what other strange true crime stories you would like to hear about.
在我们开始之前，请务必订阅我们的怪异历史频道。如果您想留下评论告诉我们您还想听哪些奇怪的真实犯罪故事，欢迎留言。
Okay, time to push it to the limit. If Scarface taught us anything, it's that part of being an underworld kingpin is having a zoo filled with exotic animals.
好了，是时候超越极限了。如果《疤面煞星》教会我们什么，那就是作为黑道大佬的一部分，拥有一只装满异国动物的动物园是必不可少的。
Pablo Escobar's zoo was only functional for about ten years, but during its heyday, he allowed locals to explore it for free. He even paid to bust children to the zoo, as if to say, hey, I'm not such a bad guy, but after it was taken over by the government, officials moved all of the animals to other zoos, sort of like an animal witness relocation program.
巴勃罗·埃斯科巴的动物园仅持续了大约十年，但在其鼎盛时期，他允许当地人免费参观。他甚至支付费用让儿童前往动物园参观，好像在说：“嘿，我不是一个坏人。”但是在政府接管后，官员将所有动物移至其他动物园，有点像动物见证人保护计划。
The hippos, however, were allowed to remain. It's not exactly clear why the hippos escaped relocation.
然而，河马被允许留下来了。目前尚不清楚为什么河马逃过了被迁移的命运。
One possible explanation is that they were just too difficult to move. Hippos are heavy and aggressive, so transporting them is kind of similar to relocating a delivery truck. That's mad at you, specifically.
一种可能的解释是它们太难移动了。河马体型庞大且攻击性很强，因此运输它们就有点像重新定位货车；特别是它们对你很生气。
Another possibility is that someone decided to leave them because they were well suited to Colombia, where the shallow rivers easily accommodate their needs. In their native Africa, droughts naturally call hippo populations, but the weather in Colombia actually helps them thrive.
另一种可能性是因为有人决定把他们留在哥伦比亚，因为那里浅水河流非常适合他们的需要。在他们的故乡非洲，干旱会自然地减少河马的数量，但哥伦比亚的气候实际上有助于它们的繁荣。
For instance, the agreeable climate has led to a kind of hippo baby boom. The hippos love Colombia so much that they're mating at least six years earlier than they do in Africa. The hippos in Africa begin this process at around age eight and ten for males and females, respectively.
举个例子，宜人的气候导致了一种河马宝宝繁殖潮。河马非常喜欢哥伦比亚，以至于它们在这里的交配时间比非洲早了至少六年。非洲的河马会在雄性和雌性分别达到八岁和十岁左右开始这个过程。
But Escobar's hippos? They get through their awkward middle school years much earlier and start reproducing at age three. And because the females give birth each year, the population is growing pretty fast.
但是埃斯科巴尔的河马呢？它们在尴尬的初中时期很快就过去了，并在三岁时开始繁殖。由于母河马每年都会生产，因此这个种群增长得相当快。
Escobar kept exactly four hippos at his zoo, presumably, so he could invite his fellow kingpins over to play a jumbo-sized version of hungry, hungry hippos. After the zoo was seized and the hippos were left to their own devices, the animals multiplied quickly.
在他的动物园里，埃斯科巴尔保留了恰好四头河马，可能是因为他想邀请他的同伙一起玩一种大号版本的“饥饿的河马”游戏。但随着动物园被查封，这些河马被自行放养，它们的数量迅速增加了。
Today, the herd is growing at around six percent a year. Some have even moved at least 90 miles away from Hacienda Napalice, which is understandable because he wants to live close to their parents.
如今，这个养牛场的牛群数量每年增长约6%。有些甚至搬到距离Hacienda Napalice至少90英里远的地方，这很可以理解，因为他们想住在离他们父母比较近的地方。
Today, there are reportedly as many as 130 hippos around the Antiochia province. Experts predict that hippos descended from Escobar's original dream team could total around 400 by the year 2031. By 2009, Colombia will presumably be in some kind of planet of the hippo's situation.
据报道，Antiochia省附近有多达130头河马。专家预测，从Escobar最初的梦之队传下来的河马数量到2031年可能会达到约400头。到2009年，哥伦比亚可能会进入一种河马的星球状态。
The good news is, while Escobar's hippos are potentially dangerous to humans in certain situations, so far they haven't actually caused many problems with the people of Colombia. In fact, for many years there were no reports of any attacks, and only a few people had ever had aggressive encounters.
好消息是，尽管埃斯科巴尔的河马在某些情况下对人类有潜在危险，但到目前为止，它们实际上并没有对哥伦比亚人民造成太多问题。事实上，多年来没有任何攻击的报道，只有少数人曾经有过挑衅性的遭遇。
The hippos mostly kept to themselves, like Goths at the beach. And while these hippos haven't hurt anyone yet, their numbers continued to increase, and their territory continues to spread, so it's probably only a matter of time before one gets too close to humans for comfort.
河马大多数时候独来独往，就像海滩上的哥特人。虽然这些河马还没有伤害任何人，但它们的数量不断增加，它们的领地不断扩散，所以很可能在不久的将来会有一只河马过于靠近人类而引发不适。
In 2007, villagers began calling the Ministry of Environment in Bogota, saying they'd seen a strange giant creature with small ears and a big mouth. It was either a series of indiesel sightings for the introduction of a new species. People's dispatched veterinarian Carlos Valderama to check out the situation and discovered that the animal in question was, in fact, a hippo.
在2007年，某些村庄的居民开始给波哥大环境部打电话，称他们看到了一只奇怪的巨型生物，有小耳朵和大嘴巴。它可能是一系列新物种的谣言。相关人员派遣兽医卡洛斯·瓦尔德拉马去了解情况，发现所谓的动物实际上是一只河马。
According to Valderama, a lot of Colombians are unfamiliar with the animals, and don't realize how potentially unsafe they can be around humans. Local newspapers even contain reports about children attempting to keep hippo calves as pets, which is understandable because baby hippos are adorable.
据瓦尔德拉马所说，许多哥伦比亚人对这些动物不熟悉，不意识到它们在人类周围潜在的危险性。当地的报纸甚至包含有关孩子试图把河马幼仔养成宠物的报道，这是可以理解的，因为小河马太可爱了。
For the most part, however, the relationship between the Colombian people and their chunky semi-aquatic neighbors is fairly quiet. The animals occasionally wander into town and stop traffic, but they're seen as more of a nuisance than a real problem. They're even viewed by many as village pets, which is exactly how Pablo Escobar saw them.
尽管如此，哥伦比亚人民与他们的胖胖的半水栖邻居之间的关系大多数情况下是相当平静的。这些动物偶尔会走进城镇并阻塞交通，但人们认为它们更像是一个麻烦而不是真正的问题。许多人甚至把它们看作是村庄里的宠物，这正是巴勃罗·埃斯科巴所看到的。
But things have not all been peaceful. In 2009, the Colombian government authorized the termination of Pepe, a descendant of Escobar's original hippos. Pepe had become quite the troublemaker, and he was repeatedly caught doing things like bulldozing through crops, knocking down fences, and slaying cows.
但事情并不都是平静的。在2009年，哥伦比亚政府批准终止了埃斯科巴原始河马后代佩佩。佩佩成为了一个惹麻烦的家伙，经常被捕做出像铲过庄稼、打翻栅栏和杀掉奶牛这样的事情。
Crack team of Colombian commanders in a battle to the death with a drug dealer's crazed hippopotamus, sounds like a banana's action flick. Wait, not bananas. What a hippo's eat. Whatever that is. But it didn't go down like that.
一支由哥伦比亚指挥官组成的精英小组在与毒贩手下疯狂的河马展开生死搏斗，听起来像是香蕉动作片的情节。等等，不是香蕉，河马吃什么就是什么了。但事情并不会像那样。
In reality, some soldiers cornered Pepe while two professional hunters punched his ticket. The image of the soldiers posing with Pepe's body caused an outcry. Protesters were furious that a country which already allows animal fighting was now supporting the termination of a protected species. The government was also planning to put down Pepe's mate in offspring, but the uproar forced them to call it off.
实际上，一些士兵围住了佩佩，而两名专业猎人则“打了他的死亡通行证”。士兵们与佩佩尸体拍照的画面引起了强烈的愤慨。抗议者愤怒地指责这个国家本来已经允许动物斗争了，现在又在支持终结一种受保护野生动物的生命。政府还计划将佩佩的伴侣和后代处决，但这场抗议迫使他们取消了这个计划。
The obvious solution to the hippo-population boom is, of course, just to relocate them. But there are a few problems with that idea. For one, each hippo weighs up to three tons, roughly the same as two Saturn ions. This creates a host of logistical problems, but more practically, it means moving the hippos would be incredibly expensive. Another problem is, where to move the hippos? Unfortunately, moving them back to their native Africa is out of the question.
在处理河马数量激增的明显解决方案是将它们搬迁。但这个想法存在一些问题。首先，每头河马重达三吨，差不多相当于两辆土星离子车的重量。这会造成一堆后勤问题，但更实际的问题是，搬迁河马将会非常昂贵。另一个问题是，把河马搬到哪里？不幸的是，将它们搬回它们的故乡非洲是不可行的。
Having men in South America for generations, Esco-Bars hippos very possibly have diseases to which African hippos have no immunity. Also they'd have to cancel their gym memberships. And that's always a hassle. Luckily, there are some alternatives to Africa. In 2023, Colombia proposed using heavy-duty iron containers to fly 70 of the hippos to sanctuaries in zoos in India and Mexico. The logistics of this operation would be complicated, but officials believe it's possible. Meanwhile, Ecuador, Botswana, and the Philippines have all expressed willingness to take on some of the animals as well, apparently undeterred by the problems Colombia is experiencing.
埃斯科-巴尔的水獭已经在南美生活了好几代人，它们很可能患有非洲水獭没有免疫力的疾病。而且它们还必须取消它们的健身会员资格，这总是很麻烦的。幸运的是，还有一些替代方案可选。2023年，哥伦比亚计划使用重型铁容器将70只海豹运往印度和墨西哥的动物园圃，寻找一片避难所。这个行动的后勤工作会很复杂，但官员们认为这是可能的。与此同时，厄瓜多尔、博茨瓦纳和菲律宾都表示愿意接收一些动物，显然并不被哥伦比亚所遇到的问题所吓倒。
That being said, captivity is only really an option for the calves. Some hippo calves have been taken to zoos. A few zoos request the adults. Building a nature reserve for the hippos is also an option. But as always, there are other considerations.
话虽如此，只有小河马适合被圈养。一些小河马幼崽被带到动物园。有几个动物园要求成年河马。建一个自然保护区也是一个选择。但是像往常一样，还有其他的考虑因素。
One of those considerations is that Colombia is a developing country, and building hippo-proof fences would be fairly expensive. Corraling some of the hippos into a reserve would also be difficult and costly, although it is fun to imagine a team of cowboys driving a herd of hippos across the rolling plains, which would technically make them hippo boys. Finally, one biologist who works in the Amazon even suggested that the government slaughter and eat some of the hippos to keep their numbers under control, which is a bit rough. But in addition to being gnarly, it's not a great idea. Hippos can carry leptosporosis, which can cause meningitis in humans.
考虑之一是哥伦比亚是发展中国家，修建防河马围栏需要相当昂贵。将一些河马围进保护区也很困难且成本高，尽管可以想象一支牛仔队带领着一群河马穿越起伏的平原，从而成为河马男孩。最后，一位在亚马逊工作的生物学家甚至建议政府屠杀和食用一些河马以控制它们的数量，这有点残酷。但除了毛骨悚然外，这并不是一个好主意。河马可能携带钩端螺旋体病，这可能会导致人类脑膜炎。
So it will probably be a while before any Colombian cizzlers and hippo steaks to the menu. Some of you may be wondering why the government doesn't take Bob Barker's perpetual advice and get the hippos fixed to control their population. Nudoring a giant angry mouth with legs is extremely difficult, and it's equally risky for the animal. It's hard for even experienced vests to tell male and female hippos apart. It can't be identified until they're sedated, as males have their reproductive organs in their abdomens.
因此，可能还需要一段时间才能将哥伦比亚的骆驼蹄子和河马肉添加到菜单中。你们中的一些人可能会想知道为什么政府不采取鲍勃巴克持续的建议，对河马进行绝育控制它们的人口。将一个愤怒的大嘴和腿割掉实在是极其困难的事情，这对动物来说同样危险。即使是有经验的兽医也很难区分雄性和雌性河马，只有在河马被麻醉后才能进行鉴定，因为雄性的生殖器位于腹部。
And while we're on the subject, not even sedating a hippo is a straightforward procedure? Nobody could tell how any given animal will react to anesthesia, let alone one as large as a hippo. And it's possible that a tranquilized hippo would just run back into the water before the drugs fully took effect and drowned. Despite the difficulties posed by sterilization, the Colombian government was pursuing a plan to sterilize or euthanize the animals until a lawsuit resulted in a U.S. federal court recognizing the hippo's interested persons with legal protections. So legally speaking, hippos are people, too.
谈及这个话题，就连给河马麻醉也不是一件简单的程序。没有人能预测任何一只动物对麻醉的反应，更何况河马这样的大型动物。有可能在麻醉剂完全发挥作用前，被镇静的河马会想办法逃回水里并溺水。尽管绝育带来了很多困难，哥伦比亚政府仍在推行计划对动物进行绝育或安乐死，直到一起诉讼引起美国联邦法院的重视。从法律上来看，河马也是人。
hippos are not native to South America, making them according to one hippo researcher the largest invasive animal. And because hippos were never meant to live in Colombia, some are worried that they will inevitably affect the ecosystem in unpredictable ways. For example, hippos eat a lot. Just look at this picture of one. He's not ordering from the dollar menu. And when a hippo eats a lot, it poops a lot. While some fish and bugs consume hippo waste, it can be a bad thing in massive quantities.
河马并非南美洲土生土长的动物，因此根据一位河马研究专家的说法，它们是最大型的入侵动物。由于河马本不应该生活在哥伦比亚，因此一些人担心它们会以不可预测的方式对生态系统产生不良影响。例如，河马吃得很多，只需看看这张图片就知道了。它们不是在点美元菜单。而且，当一个河马吃得很多时，它也会拉很多便便。虽然一些鱼类和昆虫会吃河马的排泄物，但是大量的河马排泄物会对生态系统造成不良影响。
For example, hippo-dung can put too many nutrients into the water, which creates algae blooms. That algae harms fish by depriving them of oxygen. In a possibly ominous portent of things to come, numerous fish have been wiped out in the area near Escobar Zoo. No one is 100% sure why the fish died. Maybe the fish found some of Escobar's old product and simply partied too hard. But ecologists suspect the hippos may be to blame.
举个例子，河马粪便会往水中释放出过多的营养物质，导致藻类爆发。这些藻类会通过消耗氧气来危害鱼类。可怕的是，在埃斯科巴动物园附近，许多鱼类已被灭绝。至于为什么这些鱼死亡，没有人可以百分之百确定。可能是这些鱼发现了埃斯科巴的一些旧产品，只是欢闹过了头。但生态学家怀疑河马可能会是罪魁祸首。
To aay, in 2022, the government declared the hippos a toxic invasive species. Despite the dangers they pose, hippos, particularly baby hippos, are entirely too cute. And therein lies the biggest obstacle to dealing with Escobar's hippos. People love them. And that makes it incredibly difficult for the Colombian government to do anything productive to curb their population.
在2022年，政府宣布河马为有毒入侵物种。尽管它们带来了危险，特别是小河马，但它们实在是太可爱了。这就是解决埃斯科巴河马问题最大的障碍。人们喜欢它们。这让哥伦比亚政府想要采取任何有益的措施来控制它们的数量变得非常困难。
The slaying a pepe the hippo caused worldwide outrage. The researcher from the Colombian environmental agency, which manages the hippos, told National Geographic that the hippos have become a tourist attraction. People love them. And while some experts argue that putting the hippos down is the best way to control the situation, those experts aren't winning any friends in Colombia.
杀害河马佩佩引发了全球公愤。负责管理这些河马的哥伦比亚环境机构的研究员告诉《国家地理》杂志，这些河马已成为旅游景点，受到游客的喜爱。虽然一些专家认为，将这些河马安乐死是控制情况的最佳方式，但这些专家在哥伦比亚并没有赢得任何朋友。
At least one local environmental authority told the BBC, he believes the Colombian government doesn't want to give the world a negative image by harming such a charismatic animal. Let's hard argue with, come tour the hippo graveyards of Colombia. Doesn't exactly pop off a travel brochure.
至少有一位本地环保官员告诉BBC，他认为哥伦比亚政府不希望通过伤害这种具有魅力的动物来给世界留下负面印象。让我们难以反驳，来参观哥伦比亚的河马墓地。这并不是一个旅游宣传手册上常见的景点。
So what do you think? How would you deal with Pablo Escobar's hippos? Let us know in the comments below and while you're at it, check out some of these other videos from our Weird History.
那么，你认为怎么办才能应对巴勃罗·埃斯科巴尔的河马呢？请在下面的评论中告诉我们，并且在此期间，检查一下我们《另类历史》的其他一些视频。