Hippopotamus

Hippopotamuses create trophic cascades through a unique mechanism: nutrient transport. Hippos graze on land at night, defecating in rivers during the day. This transfers massive quantities of nutrients from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems—a single river may receive tons of hippo dung daily. The nutrients cascade through the aquatic food web, supporting fish, insects, and the predators that eat them.

The hippo cascade shows how herbivores can be ecosystem keystones through transport rather than consumption. Elk cascades work by what elk eat; hippo cascades work by what hippos move. Different mechanism, similar ecosystem-structuring effect.

The business parallel is value transfer that creates unexpected ecosystem effects. Hippos are like companies that transfer resources between markets—fintech moving capital, aggregators moving attention, or logistics moving goods. Their value isn't in production but in connection. Hippo-style cascades happen when resource transfer, not resource consumption, structures market dynamics. Understanding who moves what between systems reveals cascade effects that consumption-focused analysis misses.