Indian Billionaire Offers To Adopt Pablo Escobar’s Cocaine Hippos

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

Anant Ambani, son of Mukesh Ambani and heir to roughly $95 billion in petrochemical wealth, has formally offered to relocate 80 of Colombia’s invasive cocaine hippos to his private wildlife sanctuary in Gujarat, sparing them from a planned cull. The hippos are descended from four exotic pets imported by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 1980s, and have since multiplied into a population of roughly 170 in the Magdalena River basin. They have no natural predators, no seasonal restrictions on breeding, and no sense of shame.

The proposal, submitted by Vantara CEO Vivaan Karani on Ambani’s behalf, describes a “veterinary-led capture and transport” followed by relocation to a “purpose-designed naturalistic setting” approximately 9,000 miles from the Magdalena River. Vantara, located in Jamnagar, sits on 3,000 acres adjacent to the Reliance Jamnagar Refinery Complex, billed as the world’s largest crude oil facility. Summer temperatures there routinely exceed 100°F. Officials describe the climate as “naturalistic” in the sense that hippos, like all living things, will adapt or die.

Ambani’s statement called the hippos “living, sentient beings” who “did not choose where they were born.” This is also technically true of hippos that will soon be sharing their new airspace with the largest petroleum operation on Earth, but the statement did not address that. Vantara already houses more than 150,000 animals across 2,000 species, including 250 elephants, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards, and 900 crocodiles. Adding 80 three-tonne semi-aquatic mammals to a facility next to an oil refinery in coastal Gujarat was described by Vantara as a “specially designed and enriched environment.” The hippos were not available for comment.

Colombia has been wrestling with the problem since Escobar’s death in 1993, when his estate at Hacienda Nápoles was seized and converted into a tourist attraction featuring water slides, swimming pools, and the surviving members of the largest illegal private zoo in South American history. The hippos, never the priority during the compound seizure, simply wandered off the property and into the Magdalena River. A 2009 cull was abandoned after a photograph of a hippo named Pepe being shot caused public outrage, demonstrating an iron law of wildlife management: people will accept almost any policy until they see it happen to one animal with a cute name. Subsequent sterilization efforts began in 2023 and have been described by officials as “ongoing,” which is also a synonym for “not working.”

The hippos themselves have been thriving in conditions their African cousins would consider luxury. Each adult consumes up to 40 kilograms of grass per day, much of it previously eaten by the world’s largest rodent, the capybara, which now finds itself in the geopolitically humiliating position of being out-grazed by the offspring of a living souvenir from a dead cocaine baron. The hippos also produce waste containing harmful bacteria, contributing to algal blooms in the river system. Local fishermen have begun describing the animals as “aggressive” and “unpredictable,” and have adopted the practical safety measure of hiding when they see one. Authorities have warned that, left unchecked, the population could reach 1,000 by 2035

Vantara’s offer arrives against a complicated backdrop. The petroleum facility was the subject of a 2025 investigation by the Supreme Court of India into wildlife acquisition practices and was closed in September after accepting the report of its own Special Investigation Team. A March 2024 investigation by Himal Southasian raised questions about the legitimacy of animal sourcing; an English translation of a related German investigation was subsequently removed from Scribd following a copyright complaint from an entity that turned out not to actually represent the German publication. And while we can’t explicitly state Vantara faked the takedown notice, we can’t say it was entirely random either. Critics have called Vantara a “vanity zoo.” Supporters, including the Prime Minister, have called it a point of national pride. The hippos, who are functionally illiterate, will not be asked their opinion on the matter.

Colombian officials have not yet responded to the offer, presumably because the alternative of sedating and airlifting 80 three-tonne mammals across the Pacific requires a level of logistical commitment normally reserved for moving a tank battalion to southern Asia. The transfer would also require non-detriment findings under CITES regulations, a process that traditionally takes longer than a hippo’s gestation period and not coincidentally produces fewer hippos. In the meantime, the Magdalena River population continues to grow at approximately the rate at which the original four hippos grew, which is the only rate hippos know. Tl;dr: hippos be bangin’.  

A Vantara spokesperson said the facility was “fully available” for dialogue and had extended an invitation to officials from President Gustavo Petro’s administration to visit Jamnagar. The invitation, like the offer itself, was framed as humanitarian. The hippos, who began this story as the pets of a man who murdered an estimated 4,000 people, may now end up as the wards of a man whose sanctuary the Indian Supreme Court condemned and closed. Officials described this as progress.