Hippopotamus Coloring Pages

Cute hippo coloring pages

The five easy pages have big shapes and bold lines for young children: a chubby baby hippo with a daisy behind its ear, a big round hippo face with freckles and two square teeth, a kawaii hippo holding a slice of watermelon, a baby hippo peeking out of a pond at a frog, and a hippo mask.

Hippo mask template

The mask page is a hippo face with small round ears and a wide snout, with a dashed cutting line around the outside, around each eye hole and around two small holes for elastic. Colour it, cut it out, then thread elastic through the side holes or glue it to a paper plate — ready for a zoo day, a school play or a jungle party.

The river horse

The word hippopotamus comes from ancient Greek and means “river horse”. Hippos are among the heaviest animals on land, yet they spend most of the day in rivers and lakes to keep cool. They cannot really swim: in deep water they walk or bounce along the bottom, as they do on the underwater page. After dark they climb out onto the bank to eat grass, which is what the hippo under the full moon is doing. A big yawn is often a warning to other hippos to keep their distance, and a baby hippo — called a calf — often rides on its mother’s back in the water.

Hippos and their friends

Hippos share their rivers with plenty of other animals. Small birds called oxpeckers ride on them and pick off insects, and egrets and kingfishers stand close by. One page shows a hippo in an African waterhole with a zebra and a giraffe drinking beside it, one shows a family of four hippos by the river, and one shows the pygmy hippo — a much smaller cousin that lives in the rainforests of West Africa. For fun there is also a hippo in a bubble bath and a hippo’s birthday party.

Detailed hippopotamus coloring pages for adults

The five detailed pages suit coloured pencils and fine markers: a realistic hippopotamus with its skin folds and wrinkles, a zentangle hippo on a patterned lily pad, a hippo mandala of water lilies and waves, a doodle page of hippo faces, and an African river scene with hippos, a crocodile, egrets, a fish eagle, papyrus and an elephant on the far bank.

Print the whole set at once

The button at the top of this page bundles all twenty into a single download, and every page comes as a PDF in both US Letter and A4.

More African animal pages

For the rest of the savanna see the safari animal coloring pages, and for the crocodile’s side of the river there are twenty pages in the alligator and crocodile coloring pages.