Do hippos sweat blood?

Hippopotamuses are sedentary creatures that spend most part of the night eating and most part of the day cooling off in water. Though they eat up to 40 kg of grass at night, from time to time they also have to venture out in the sun to snack. But their skin is very sensitive to both drying and sunburn and that’s why they produce their own sunscreen, in the form of a sticky reddish fluid. Some people call this “blood sweat,” but it is neither blood nor sweat.

Unlike sweat, which humans and some animals secrete onto their skin, where it evaporates and therefore cools the body, this fluid functions as a skin moisturizer, water repellent and antibiotic.

The ‘sunscreen’ is made up of two pigments-one red, called hipposudoric acid; and the other orange, called norhipposudoric acid. While both pigments act as sun blocks, hipposudoric acid also discourages the growth of bacteria.

Picture Credit : Google

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