LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Hippopotamus: Species
built 640 days ago
A hippopotamus is almost hairless, only the area around the nostrils and the tip of the tail have hairs on them. Its grey-brown skin can be 5 cm thick in some places, and it has special glands which produce an oily, red substance. This secretion may function to protect the skin against ultraviolet rays, or it may have an antibiotic function.
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The word hippopotamus comes from two Greek words that mean “river horse.” While hippos do live in rivers, they differ from horses in being artiodactyls, mammals with an even number of hoofed toes on each foot. There is ... very little about their shape that is horselike. Both species of hippos have barrel-shaped bodies, stocky legs, and smooth, almost hairless skin. Their heads appear outsized and their mouths look unusually broad.
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[23d of December] The harpoon for hippopotamus and crocodile hunting is a piece of soft steel about eleven inches long, with a narrow blade or point of about three-quarters of an inch in width, and a single but powerful barb. To this short, and apparently insignificant weapon, a strong rope is secured, about twenty feet in length, at the extremity of which is a buoy or float as large as a child's head formed of an extremely light wood called ambatch (Anemone mirabilis), that is about half the specific gravity of cork. The extreme end of the short harpoon is fixed in the point of a bamboo about ten feet long, around which the rope is twisted, while the buoy end is carried in the left hand.
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