While we all realise now that no human being can survive without water, and that we need to drink water frequently in order to survive, we are not the only living creatures that cannot survive without water.
Animals also need water for various purposes, including drinking, and when there is a drought it is the animals in the wild that suffer the most. Recently the hippos in the Great Ruaha River in Tanzania faced an even bleaker dry season because even the little water that they usually have available to them was gone due to extraction for human use.
Research conducted by the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) and published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, discovered that this lack of water affects the hippo distribution. As the hippos search for vital daytime resting sites, the increasingly move upstream over longer and longer distances as the river dries up.
Circumstances then force large numbers of hippos to congregate in the few remaining areas along the river where they find water of suitable volume and depth. The fact that the hippos have to move longer during daylight hours to find daytime resting sites causes them to become very stressed and even aggressive as the hunt for water and competition for food increases.
The common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) is one of the largest African mammals and is officially categorised as vulnerable on the “Red List” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Hippos need to stay submerged in water during the day to prevent severe sunburn and overheating, and when surface water is absent for months during the dry season it is a clear sign of what the consequences of changes in water availability in natural water courses are for wildlife populations. It is unfortunate that most of this is mainly linked to the extraction of water for agricultural production. The study fears that further decline will also threaten the populations of other wildlife in the area.
Remember, NO LIVING THING can live without water, so spare a thought for all the little creatures as well as the big animals on this planet and do not be selfish with your water-use. Use only as much as you need and make sure that you do not waste even a drop of it or animal-life on this planet may be a thing of the past.
