MICHAEL CRICHTON

The twentieth century had been a period of intensive wildlife study, whichoverturned many tong-standing conceptions about animals. It was nowrecognized that the gentle, soft-eyed deer actually lived in a ruthless, nastysociety, while the supposedly vicious wolf was devoted to family and offspring inexemplary fashion. And the African lion—the proud king of beasts—wasrelegated to the status of slinking scavenger, while the loathed hyena assumednew dignity. (For decades, observers had come upon a dawn kill to find lionsfeeding on the carcass, while the scavenging hyenas circled at the periphery,awaiting their chance. Only after scientists began night tracking the animals did anew interpretation emerge: hyenas actually made the kill, only to be driven off byopportunistic and lazy lions; hence the traditional dawn scene. This coincidedwith the discovery that lions were in many ways erratic and mean, while thehyenas had a finely developed social structure—yet another instance oflongstanding human prejudice toward the natural world of animals.)But the hippopotamus remained a poorly understood animal. Herodotus’s ‘riverhorse” was the largest African mammal after the elephant, but its habit of lying inthe water with just eyes and nostrils protruding made it difficult to study. Hipposwere organized around a male. A mature male had a harem of several femalesand their offspring, a group of eight to fourteen animals altogether.Despite their obese, rather humorous appearance, hippos were capable ofunusual violence. The bull hippopotamus was a formidable creature, fourteenfeet long and weighing nearly ten thousand pounds. Charging, he moved withextraordinary speed for such a large animal, and his four stubby blunted tuskswere actually razor sharp on the sides. A hippo attacked by slashing, moving hiscavernous mouth from side to side, rather than biting. And, unlike most animals,a fight between bulls often resulted in the death of one animal from deep slashingwounds. There was nothing symbolic about a hippopotamus fight.The animal was dangerous to man, as well. In river areas where herds werefound, half of native deaths were attributed to hippos; elephants and predatorycats accounted for the remainder. The hippopotamus was vegetarian, and atnight the animals came onto the land, where they ate enormous quantities ofgrass to sustain their great bulk. A hippo separated from the water was especiallydangerous; anyone finding himself between a landed hippo and the river he wasrushing to return to did not generally survive the experience.But the hippo was essential to Africa’s river ecology. His fecal matter,produced in prodigious quantities, fertilized the river grasses, which in turn150