No stick-in-the-muds! How galloping hippos ‘fly’ through the air at speeds of 18mph despite their not so graceful body types

No matter how you look at it, hippos are not exactly the most graceful animals out there.

However, research shows that they can be deceptively light on their feet and, when they are at their fastest, can run with all four hooves in the air.

Scientists are surprised by the findings, since hippos spend much of their time in the water. At the same time, equally heavy mammals such as elephants are not capable of galloping at all.

Even when they are running as fast as they can, elephants always have at least one foot on the ground.

But hippos, which can reach a top speed of 18 mph (29 km/h), actually “fly” 15 percent of the time they trot on land.

The new insight comes from Professor John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College and researcher Emily Pringle.

They collected footage of hippos in Flamingo Land in Yorkshire and analysed images of the running animals they had taken from the internet.

In total, the researchers examined 169 locomotor cycles from 32 individual hippos.

Analysis of the video footage revealed for the first time that the fastest-moving hippos remain suspended in the air, sometimes for extended periods of time — about 15 percent of the stride cycle, or 0.3 seconds.

Professor Hutchinson said: ‘Our study was about as simple as biomechanical research can get. Anyone can take a camera or internet videos and learn something about how animals move from that footage.

‘Hippos are difficult to work with because they tend to stay in the water and are rarely trained to be studied in zoos.

“They are also very dangerous. That is one of the reasons why science knew little about how hippos move before our research.

‘We are excited to present the first study that is focused purely on revealing how hippos walk and run. We were pleasantly surprised to see how hippos take to the air when they move quickly – it is truly impressive!’