The Charming and Elusive Canadian House Hippo

Since the 1990s, Canadians and some residents of the northeastern United States have reported sightings of small, curious creatures called House Hippos taking up residence in their homes.

Unlike their much larger namesake, House Hippos are only about the size of a mouse and pose no threat to humans. As of today, there have been no reported incidents of a House Hippo attacking neither children nor adults, so most people don’t bother calling animal control if they find one in their home. In fact, House Hippos are so rare that it’s considered lucky to find one within your house, and removing it would be both cruel and inconsiderate to the already endangered species. Since March of 2016, the Canadian House Hippo is officially a protected species and injuring or killing a House Hippo can now result in a fine of $5000 or in extreme cases, jail for up to two years. Because Canadians are so protective of their beloved House Hippos, there have been less than a dozen incidents of the recent law being enacted as of 2024.

Attempts have been made throughout the years to domesticate the House Hippo to no avail. And the Canadian Department of Wildlife and Forestry has released multiple public statements asking the public to leave the House Hippos in their natural habitats and refrain from keeping them as pets. Since biologists have had difficulties in the past understanding the breeding patterns of the House Hippo, creating an artificial House Hippo mating ground has resulted in zero births in captivity and a number of deceased House Hippos. It’s been generally agreed upon by Canadians, scientists, and their government to simply leave the House Hippos alone and learn to co-exist alongside them, much in the same way as squirrels and other woodland creatures.

Have you been lucky enough to have an encounter with a House Hippo?

A Public Service Announcement Gone Ignored

“That really looked really… real, but you knew it couldn’t be true, didn’t you?”

Much like other countries, Canada has had its fair share of iconic advertisements playing throughout the day on public television. Since 1991, a 60-second bilingual public service announcement called Heritage Minutes that celebrate an aspect of Canadian heritage and history with the goal of helping Canadians celebrate our culture and global contributions. A few good examples show the origins of Superman and Winnie the Pooh, a celebration of the Underground Railroad, and the invention of basketball. Among these advertisements showing real historical events played a completely different type of public service announcement produced by Concerned Children’s Advertisers. This PSA showed the aforementioned House Hippo that, unfortunately, doesn’t exist. And for Concerned Children’s Advertising, that was entirely the point.

But mixed in alongside Heritage Minutes PSAs, the House Hippo PSA seemed just as real as Harriet Tubman and A. A. Milne since playing them alongside one another made reality and fiction blend together in our adolescent minds. And because kids such as myself were so excited about the prospect of House Hippos existing, our brains pretty much ignored the end of the advertisement telling us that everything we just saw – House Hippos included – wasn’t real. The PSA also then tells us not to believe everything we see on television. But by that point the cute tiny hippos were more important than the last 5 seconds of the advert.

For added realism, the soothing narration describing the life of the House Hippo mimics a different Canadian public service announcement series called Hinterland Who’s Who. Hinterland Who’s Who was another 60-second PSA that was produced by Environment Canada during the 1960s and 1970s. Here’s an example of a Hinterland Who’s Who PSA on the very real woodchuck for comparison:

This, along with the fact that our attention span at a young age is not great, created the perfect storm of millennial children walking away from a PSA telling us not to believe everything we see on TV… believing that the fictional creature depicted in the PSA was real.

When in doubt, think of the House Hippo

I love all things weird, paranormal, and macabre. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be running this website! And while the House Hippo definitely applies to the increasingly alarming global issue of ‘fake news’, I also think it’s important to remember this obscure little Canadian PSA when examining any fringe paranormal subjects such as ghosts, cryptids, UFOs, etc. The internet, especially social media sites such as Facebook and Reddit are absolutely flooded with videos and images ‘proving’ life after death, visitors from the stars, or the existence of bizarre and terrifying monsters. I’m a skeptic. I’ve never personally seen anything to convince me that any of the aforementioned are real, or that any media claiming to corroborate these ideas should be taken blindly without question. And it’s a shame to see our wacky little community continue, time and time again, to put total faith in something that (with a little research) is often proven false. What would Concerned Children Advertising thinking of us? I know the House Hippo would definitely be disappointed.

Should we discuss and analyse, dissect and debate ‘evidence’ that does emerge? Absolutely, that’s the fun of it! And that’s what we should be doing. There is no official, scientifically proven authority for high strange happenings so we’re more or less in charge of policing our own community and promoting research and critical thinking among ourselves. If there is more to our known reality than we currently understand, then we’re never going to find it if we assume every (somewhat) convincing shred of evidence is true.

While I’ve tagged this article as a ‘hoax’ for organisation purposes, this isn’t entirely true since there was never any real attempt for Concerned Children’s Advertising to imply the existence of the House Hippo. It was just us dumb kids (and some adults) that didn’t bother paying attention to the end of the commercial. And who could blame us? House Hippos are super cute. Maybe once the aliens bring back Elvis, they’ll finally let us have House Hippos too.

For some added Canadian millennial nostalgia, please enjoy two more Concerned Children’s Advertisers PSAs from the 1990s: What’s Your Thing and Don’t You Put it In Your Mouth.

Sources and Additional Reading

CBC Radio – The North American house hippo is back — and ready to tackle fake news (4 October 2019)
Wikipedia – House Hippo / Companies Committed to Kids