Why are hippos so dangerously aggressive?
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Because otherwise animals could kill and eat them. Which still does happen, because humans do hunt hippos for meat. Much less nowadays, but largely because both hunting and habitat destruction have lowered their numbers.
Lions still can and occasionally do take down hippos, and in fairly recent evolutionary history there were a lot of other animals capable of doing so. So it was advantageous for hippos to establish that they are not to be trifled with.
also keep in mind how hippos are built. They are very slow on land, and they have no real way to hurt anything that is attacking them from behind. So when they go into a fight or flight response because they feel threatened, fighting gives them a far better chance of survival than trying to run away.
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