So your child wants a hippopotamus for Christmas

Parents, time to stop this problematic behavior before it starts

December 22, 2024

Note: This is actually based on a Bluesky thread I posted. It gave me joy, as I often find joy in satire at this time of year. So I’m sharing it with you.

Today, I learned there is a song about a child who wants a hippopotamus for Christmas.

This is an older song, but with the advent of the pygmy hippo Moo Deng taking the internet by storm, I’m afraid more children are going to be asking Santa for their own hippos. I understand why. They’re adorable, blubbery. In the case of Moo Deng, they appear to constantly be screaming at the injustice of the world.

A pygmy hippo with its mouth open, with a person's hands around it.

But all is not as it seems. Hippos are not the innocents the media would have you believe them to be, and any child wanting a hippopotamus for Christmas in fact wants something much, much darker.

Here are 10 reasons why a child wanting a hippo for Christmas is a sign they are a budding evil mastermind.

  1. The average hippo is around 3,000 lbs, and the average pygmy hippo a “mere” 400-500 lbs. These things are intimidating. A child who wants a hippo wants to make an impression. An impression that says “bring me your resident Superperson and let me end them in a highly complicated fashion.”

  2. Hippos LOOK round and cuddly, but in fact they are hiding slabs of solid muscle. A child who truly wants a hippo for Christmas wants a large, muscled wall. Your child is recruiting its own security force, which protect it during its inevitable evil monologues.

  3. Hippos can run 19 miles per hour for short distances. A child who wants a hippo wants a big, threatening attack steak. Your child has begun recruiting its evil minions early. Stay alert for purchases of remote volcanic islands.

  4. Hippos are also naturally aggressive toward humans, and are one of the deadliest land animals alive. They kill more than 500 people per year. And those aren’t even people who deserve it! A child with a hippo is definitely entertaining world takeover, and worse, at the end, the hippos will inevitable turn in their erstwhile master.

  5. Hippos are high maintenance. A hippo requires 88 lbs of food per day, most of that grass, some of it fruit. These vegan diets are intensely expensive, requiring your child to turn to a life of crime simply to maintain their hippo.

  6. 88 lbs of food produces a truly astonishing amount of poop. The collective shit of the nearly 4,000 hippos in the Mara river in Kenya is so vile it suffocates fish. Only a child born to be an evil genius will be pleased by this.

  7. Hippos’ large incisors (20 inches!) are used in aggressive displays against other hippos…and anyone else honestly. I’ve personally seen a kid hippo get in an argument with an adult matriarch elephant in the Mara. The elephant lost.

  8. Hippos look pigish, but are mostly closely related to whales. And what do we know about whales? Some of them have it out for boats. Their cousins are not any more peacefully minded.

  9. Hippos don’t secrete sweat. Instead they secrete a thick, red substance that makes it look like they are SWEATING BLOOD. It keeps them moist and protects them from sun. It also sends a heck of a message to your evil child genius’s enemies.

  10. The pygmy hippo is endangered, and it is therefore the most criminal mastermind thing to not just want a soldier that always chooses violence, but an army entirely made up of members of an endangered species. All that’s needed now are the laser beams.

Happy holidays.

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