Endangered pygmy hippo born at Bristol Zoo

A pygmy hippo calf bobs up and down, playing hide and seek, as he learns how to keep himself afloat in the deep end of the Hippo House’s heated water at Bristol Zoo.

He’s only three and a half weeks old, but the unnamed infant is a cause for huge celebration at the zoo as he comes from an endangered species.

Pygmy hippos are smaller than regular hippos, with longer legs but a smaller head. They adapt to aquatic life in a way that common hippopotamus don’t, allowing the calf to close his ears and nose underwater and see clearly.

The baby hippo gets pool access twice a day for an hour at a time, and he’s getting stronger every day, say zookeepers.

He currently struggles to hold his weight above water. “He’s not figured it out yet. He just sinks, but he is staying up for longer than he was initially,” says senior mammal keeper Shanika Retnayake. 

The infant’s mum is Sirana, who Retnayake says is doing really well. She adds: “She is quite an aggressive hippo, to put it politely, and she’s very protective over the calf.”

The calf’s father Nato is “genetically significant”, as Retnayake explains: “The rarer the genes, the keener the zookeepers are to breed the animals. The majority of pygmy hippos in captivity are female, making the birth of the male hippo even more exciting.”

Female pygmy hippos in the wild usually breed once every two years and are pregnant for a period of six months.

Bristol Zoo’s baby was very thin when he was first born, but quickly fattened up.

Mostly found in West Africa, pygmy hippos are threatened by poachers as well as deforestation. There are thought to be less than 2,000 in the world and they are endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

This calf is part of a conservation effort to help save pygmy hippos from extinction.

The birth at Bristol Zoo comes after the tragic death of another newborn hippo here in December 2015, at only five weeks old.

“The last one had a veterinary issue that we couldn’t have foreseen,” Retnayake says. “There was nothing we really could have done to stop that.”

She adds that this newborn is looking very healthy. “He’s much bigger than the last one, much stronger, doing much better in the pool,” she says.

For the last calf she says there were no signs up until the day it was sick. “You never know,” she says, “but this newborn is doing really well.”

The infant is as yet to be named but there are plans to hold a naming competition in the next few weeks, with the public having the final say.

Pygmy hippos are weaned at about eight months old, so the calf will be moved on to another zoo when he’s old enough.

You can see the baby hippo enjoying pool time with his mum at Bristol Zoo from 2pm to 5pm from September 19. For more information, visit www.bristolzoo.org.uk.

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