Which is bigger, hippo or rhino? The white rhino ranks higher

By National Geographic’s ranking, the white rhino is the bigger animal: it puts hippos third among the world’s land mammals by size, behind elephants and white rhinos. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance fact sheet lists male white rhino body weight as 2,300 kg, while the IUCN SSC Hippo Specialist Group gives adult common hippo weights averaging 1546 kg and 1385 kg.

The question treats rhino as one animal, but five rhino species survive today, two native to Africa and three native to Asia. The San Diego Zoo Animals and Plants page names the white rhino as the heaviest and the Sumatran rhino as the smallest. One hippo, a captive male in Munich, Germany, was recorded at 4,500 kg according to Animal Diversity Web, but that is a record for a single animal, not a typical weight.

White rhino weight and size

The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance fact sheet lists male white rhino body weight as 2,300 kg and female body weight as 1,800 kg. Animal Diversity Web puts adult white rhino weight at approximately 1000 to 3600 kg.

Animal Diversity Web gives the average head and body length of white rhinos, not including the tail, as 3.35 to 3.77 m, and an average shoulder height of 1.71 to 2.85 m. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance fact sheet lists 360 to 420 cm for head and body and 80 to 100 cm for the tail.

White rhinos carry a hump of muscle on the neck and shoulders that helps hold up the head. The San Diego Zoo Animals and Plants page says the hump alone can weigh 800 to 1,000 pounds (362 to 454 kilograms).

Hippo weight, from averages to records

The IUCN SSC Hippo Specialist Group gives adult common hippo weights averaging 1546 kg (range 955 to 2000) and 1385 kg (range 995 to 1850). It states them for both sexes and does not say which figure belongs to which sex. Animal Diversity Web says that at maturity males tend to run about 200 kg larger than females. It adds that males appear to keep growing for their whole lives, while females reach their top weight at around age 25.

The IUCN group gives 2065 kg as the highest reported weight of a hippo in the wild, for a male in Uganda (citing Klingel 2013). The 4,500 kg record from Munich was a captive animal, and the group attributes the larger size of captive hippos mostly to obesity from improper food.

Not every rhino is a heavyweight

The San Diego Zoo Animals and Plants page gives the white rhino as the heaviest rhino species at 2,300 kilograms and the Sumatran rhino as the lightest at 800 kilograms on average. For length, it lists 3.7 to 4 meters for the white rhino, the largest species, and 2.5 to 3 meters for the Sumatran rhino, the smallest.

Hippo length, height and build

The IUCN SSC Hippo Specialist Group lists the head and body length of male common hippos as 312 cm, within a range of 260 to 350 cm. Animal Diversity Web gives hippo length as 209 to 505 cm, with a tail of about 35 cm counted in that figure, and says hippos stand 150 to 165 cm tall.

Among the dominant features of the common hippo, the IUCN group lists a body shaped like a barrel, limbs that are disproportionally short and a large head whose eyes, ears and nostrils sit high on the skull.