Colombia wants to send Pablo Escobar’s hippos to Mexico, India

They’re horny, horny hippos.

The Colombian government wants to send Pablo Escobar’s so-called “cocaine hippos” to Mexico and India because the sexed-up mammals won’t stop procreating.

The hippos — descendants of four animals imported illegally from Africa by the late drug lord in the 1980s — have been left to reproduce after Escobar’s death in a shootout with police in 1993.

Environmental authorities estimate that the population of the beasts has ballooned to about 130 — and with no natural predators, it could more than triple by 2031.

The government is proposing the transfer of at least 70.

The heavyset herbivores, which weigh up to 3 tons each, have now spread far beyond Escobar’s 7,000-acre Hacienda Napoles, nestled between Medellin and Bogota along the Magdalena River.

Experts warn that the oversexed hippos could put at risk the area’s wildlife because their urine and feces change the composition of the river water and could endanger the habitat of manatees and capybaras, which are native to Colombia.

In 2021, the Colombian government began sterilizing the horny, horny hippos in a bid to keep their numbers down, but those animals that were not treated with chemicals to make them infertile continued producing calves at an alarming rate.

The hippopotamus has a gestation period of eight months and they give birth to one calf every two years, according to the National Geographic.

For the past year, officials have been working on a new proposal to send the randy hippos to India and Mexico.

Lina Marcela de los Ríos Morales, director of animal protection and welfare at Antioquia’s environment ministry, said the idea is to lure the mammals with food into oversized iron containers, which then would be hauled by truck to the airport in the city of Rionegro.

From there, the portly animals would be flown to their faraway final destinations, where there are sanctuaries and zoos capable of caring for them.

The plan is to send 60 hippos to the Greens Zoological Rescue & Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat, India, which De los Ríos Morales said would cover the cost of the containers and air transport.

Another 10 hippos would be shipped to zoos and sanctuaries in Mexico.

The planned transfers would impact only those hippos living in the rivers surrounding Escobar’s former jungle property, not the ones inside Hacienda Napoles, which was once home to the ruthless kingpin’s private zoo.

Other inhabitants of the misbegotten menagerie, including elephants, ostriches, zebras and giraffes, had been sent to zoos and sanctuaries around the world, but the four original hippos — said to be Escobar’s favorites – were allowed to stay at the ranch after their owner’s killing, where they and their offspring have become something of a tourist attraction.

De los Ríos Morales said that the proposal to send the hippos out of the country is more humane than killing them off as a toxic invasive species, as they were classified last year.

Others countries, including Ecuador, the Philippines and Botswana, have also expressed interest in taking in the nuisance hippos.

With Post wires