RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - It was hard enough to find the hippo, a massive, ornery male with a reputation for harassing local ranchers. For three long months, scientists tracked it through the Colombian countryside, staking out lakes, traipsing through brush and camping on nearby farms.
But castrating it – that was an almost herculean task. They had to inject it with a potent elephant tranquilizer before it was safe to approach. Even with the hippo immobilized, it was surprisingly difficult to locate his, ahem, parts.
“It was horrible,” recalled David Echeverri Lopez, a researcher at the regional environmental agency Cornare who . . .
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