🦛
Hippopotamus
Hippopotamus amphibius
Mammals · Vulnerable
vs
🦁
Lion
Panthera leo
Carnivores · Vulnerable
43 clips name both of them
83 million views between them.
Hippopotamus outweighs Lion 18× — 2,640 kg against 149 kg. Both figures are averages across males and females.
To scale
Grid at 50 cm
50 cm
1 m
1.5 m
2 m
Silhouettes: PhyloPic — Lukasiniho (CC BY-NC-SA); others CC0.
Hippopotamus
1.47 m
at the shoulder
Human
1.70 m
full standing height
for scale
Lion
1.15 m
at the shoulder
Tale of the tape
Body mass
2,640 kg
🦛 Hippopotamus · COMBINE
149 kg
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Shoulder height
1.47 m
🦛 Hippopotamus
1.15 m
🦁 Lion
Body length
5.05 m
🦛 Hippopotamus · COMBINE
2.17 m
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Top speed
24 km/h
🦛 Hippopotamus
55 km/h
🦁 Lion
Bite force
no figure yet
🦛 Hippopotamus
1,768 N
🦁 Lion
Maximum lifespan
61 yr
🦛 Hippopotamus · COMBINE
30 yr
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Bars are sized against the larger of the two figures. Bite force figures come from individual studies and vary a lot between sources.
Animals caught on camera
Real footage of the animals on this site — hunting, fighting, and getting on with it.
Shared ancestry
The closest group they share is Laurasiatheria (superorder), home to 4,193 species.
We know what their shared ancestor was, but not when it lived — no dated family tree spans both of them yet.