A body designed for water, not a trail
A useful pack animal must do more than carry weight: it needs to walk steadily over distance and tolerate people guiding it. A hippo’s body is adapted to a different job. Its barrel-shaped bulk and short legs work well in shallow water, where it can move along the bottom and let the water support much of its weight. On land, that same body is poorly suited to long journeys with a load.
Hippos can travel over land, especially between water and grazing areas, but that is not the same as being built for sustained hauling. Their movement is powerful, not the economical, controlled stride a handler needs from an animal on a route.
The handler cannot simply steer the animal
Pack animals also have to accept close human control. Hippos are territorial and can react aggressively when people or other animals enter their space. Their enormous jaws make a bad encounter especially dangerous. Reins can signal a direction; they cannot make a powerful wild animal reliably cooperate.
That distinction matters: being strong enough to carry a load is not the same as being suited to carry one. A dependable transport animal needs manageable behavior as well as the right build. With a hippo, the risk of handling it would overwhelm any advantage its strength might seem to offer.
The wrong tradeoff for transport
For a pack animal, strength is useful only when it comes with endurance, controllability, and safe access for loading. Hippos offer little reason to accept the opposite bargain: a massive animal that is awkward on land and dangerous to direct. Their power is impressive—but it is power adapted to life around water, not to taking orders on a road.
