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Witness History: Castrating Pablo Escobar's hippos

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Castrating Pablo Escobar's hippos

28/09/2022 GMT

BBC World Service - Witness History, Castrating Pablo Escobar's hippos

Pablo Escobar's pet hippos were found roaming Colombian waterways in 2007

In 2007 hippos were found 100km from the abandoned ranch where the dead drug kingpin Pablo Escobar had kept them. Vet Carlos Valderrama was called in to perform a castration.

When drug kingpin Pablo Escobar died in 1993 having built a billion dollar cocaine empire, he left behind a zoo. While his rhinos, giraffes, elephants and kangaroos were re-housed, the hippos were left in Escobar’s abandoned ranch in the Colombian countryside. 

In 2007 they started turning up 100 kilometres away, frightening fishermen. Vet Carlos Valderrama was called in to tackle the problem. He describes to Josephine McDermott his experience of the first ever castration of a hippo in the wild.

(Photo: Carlos Valderrama castrating the hippo. Credit: Carlos Valderrama)

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