© 2000 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
BOOK REVIEWS
1 Department of Anatomical Sciences, Health Science Center T-8 #040, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-8081 E-mail: moleary{at}mail.som.sunysb.edu
The Hippos: Natural History and Conservation. S. K. ELTRINGHAM. T & A D Poyser Ltd., 1999, 184 pp., 8 plates.
The Hippos is a very straight forward account of the biology, ecology and conservation of an incredible group of animals that is on a collision course with humans for space to exist on the earth. While the nonspecialist will readily understand this book, it also serves as an adequate point of departure for the mammalogist or systematist looking for an entrée into the primary literature on hippopotamids. One third of the twelve chapters detail the history and future of the conservation of hippos and are the strongest feature of the book. Indeed the biological and historical data supplied serve primarily as background to conservation problems rather than as exhaustive treatments on their own. The author himself contributed to the collection of much of the original conservation data and these chapters will doubtless become a primary reference for hippo conservationists or for those working with other animals for which the conservation of hippopotamids may serve as an instructive precedent. In a moving plea, Eltringham contrasts the relatively weak efforts for the conservation of hippopotamids against much stronger ones for the conservation of elephants. The numbers of each animal speak for the cause; Africa conservatively boasts half a million elephants due to effective conservation campaigns, but less than half that many hippos because they have been relatively ignored. This book should focus attention on the hippo clade.
Two thirds of the book covers the anatomy, physiology, ecology, history, paleontology and systematics of hippos. Predictably the majority of information pertains to the common hippo, Hippopotamus amphibious, about which much more is known. Eltringham does, however, cull the rare data available for the pygmy hippo, Hexaprotodon liberiensis, often giving the species separate treatment in many sections of the text. These more anatomical chapters do not convey the same depth of expertise or detail as those on conservation but certainly serve as an adequate introduction to the biology of these mammals. While the book is not heavily illustrated, it does contain eight black and white plates and many schematic drawings, maps and graphs that clarify points in the text without being overly detailed. Eltringham highlights several intriguing features of these animals, such as that the male common hippo appears to grow continuously in weight throughout its ontogeny. Such observations will undoubtedly inspire future research to see, for example, how other measures of growth and maturity, such as the skeleton, are affected by such continuous growth in weight.
Many may turn to this book to learn more about the recently controversial topic of the phylogenetic position of hippos. The controversy emerged because a number of molecule-based analyses have recently reported results showing that hippos are the sister taxon of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises), a hypothesis without precedent in paleontological studies. Eltringham's treatment of this topic is brief and cautious, a prudent approach given that fossil evidence contradicts molecular results (O'Leary, 1999
). His statement, however, that the fossil record of cetaceans is of no better quality than that of hippos ignores the tremendous advances in the quality of the cetacean fossil record made in the last decade primarily by P. D. Gingerich and J. G. M Thewissen (see Thewissen, 1998 and references therein). Other comments that the hypothesis of an anthracothere "ancestry" of hippos is weakened because fossils of both animals are not found together, is confusing at best. The paleontological section of the book also omits Harrison's recent description of new hippopotamid material from Kenya and is poorly referenced in general. Eltringham uses the word "adaptation" loosely throughout the book to describe features in each of the two extant hippopotamid genera. In doing so he fails to demonstrate whether these adaptations are synapomorphies, and thus does not make a strong case for the features being adaptations. Frustrating at times for the specialist, the text is only loosely referenced in parts, adding to its readability but preventing the immediate investigation of primary sources of certain data and ideas.
The author's amazing and amusing scientific anecdotes make the book memorable. One details the long pilgrimage of Huberta the hippo, possibly one of the most extreme incidents of female dispersal, and a second describes hippo carnivory and cannibalism. Despite the hippo's reputation for ferociousness when disturbed, Eltringham argues that these animals can be tamed and would make excellent pets. He even goes so far as to suggest that they could serve in captivity as a simultaneous lawnmower and muck-spreader!
Zoologists face an interesting interplay between extinction and phylogeny reconstruction. The hippo with its love and need for water exhibits intriguing similarities to the most aquatic of all mammals, cetaceans. Is this similarity due to phylogeny? How can a systematist best evaluate molecular data for phylogeny reconstruction when most members of the clades of interest, whales, artiodactyls and perissodactyls, are extinct? Fortunately some of these curious animals still exist providing molecular, morphological, and behavioral data to address this question. Eltringham's conservation research should help keep it that way.
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Harrison, T. 1997. The anatomy, paleobiology, and phylogenetic relationships of the Hippopotamidae (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) from the Manonga Valley, Tanzania. Neogene Paleontology of the Manonga Valley Tanzania. In T. Harrison (ed.)Topics in geobiology., Plenum Press, New York.
O'Leary, M. A. 1999. Parsimony analysis of total evidence from extinct and extant taxa and the cetacean-artiodactyl question (Mammalia, Ungulata). Cladistics, 15:315-330.[CrossRef]
Thewissen, J. G. M.(ed.) 1998. The emergence of whales., Plenum Press, New York.
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