The scientists were surprised by the cub's capacity, but it got them the metrics that they needed about how much food she normally ate. Additionally, it was clear that they wouldn't endanger the cub's health if they tricked her body into losing weight. Heck, if anything, their experiment was going to make her healthier!

When it was next time to feed the test subject, instead of giving her real hippo meat, they dressed lab-grown meat in synthetic hippopotamus skin. Synthetic meat was, for one thing, infinitely easier to procure than actual African game. More importantly, though, the synthetic meat offered a simple way to get the cub to ingest their new weight-loss drug. This particular batch of meat was treated with a chemical that would, if this test proceeded like tests on smaller animals...