Is a hippo bigger than a grizzly bear? Hippo and bear sizes

The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance lists female hippos at a 3,000 pound average and males at 3,500 to 9,920 pounds. The same fact sheet puts brown bear weight at 215 to 660 pounds for females and 330 to 1,500 pounds for males, and brown bear length at 6 to 9.8 feet.

The National Park Service lists an average body mass of 413 lb for an adult male grizzly bear in Yellowstone. The same figure for an adult female is 269 lb.

Hippo weight against brown bear weight

The Alliance also notes that the grizzly is among the smallest of the brown bear subspecies.

What grizzlies weigh in Yellowstone

The National Park Service lists separate figures for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The heaviest weights the National Park Service knows of in that ecosystem reach 715 lb for an adult male and 436 lb for an adult female. Those are the top of the record for the area rather than a typical animal.

Length and shoulder height

Hippos measure 10.8 to 16.5 feet, while brown bears measure 6 to 9.8 feet, and the Alliance says male brown bears are larger than females. That same fact sheet lists hippo height at up to 5.2 feet at the shoulder and brown bear height at 3 to 4 feet at the shoulder. Animal Diversity Web, working in metric, gives hippopotamuses a length between 209 and 505 cm and brown bears a shoulder height of 90 to 150 cm.

Balanced upright on the hind legs, a brown bear can stand 8 feet tall, Animal Diversity Web says. That reading is not the same as the standing shoulder height.

The heaviest hippo on record

One captive bull is kept in Munich, Germany. That bull reaches the highest benchmark at 4,500 kg.