Are there any hippos in Louisiana?

Actually, there are quite a few living wild in South Louisiana. These seem to be the descendants of hippos given to pre-teen girls as Christmas presents since 1952 or so. read more

Filmmaker Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment has acquired the movie rights to "American Hippopotamus," a long-form article written for the Atavist by Jan Mooallem in December that describes the joint efforts of an American frontiersman, a South African big-game hunter and a Louisiana congressman to import hippos from Africa to the Louisiana bayou in 1910. read more

At the same time, there was a real problem with invasive water hyacinth plants; there still is in fact. So a Louisiana Congressman named Robert Broussard decided he could solve the water hyacinth problem by bringing in hippos to suck up the plants. read more