 Although there have been no remains dating to within the last thousand years, the hippopotamus has been surprisingly common in Malagasy oral legends.In different regions of Madagascar, stories were recorded of the , the , the , and the , all animals that resembled hippopotamuses.The strength of these oral traditions led the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to classify "H. madagascarensis" as recently extinct (going extinct some time after the year 1500).