On April 24th, a male hippo named Shakti died at the Byculla Zoo. The zoo has a history of mismanagement and animal mistreatment, angering animal activists and welfare groups.
The zoo is looking at a modernization plan which will provide better facilities for its animals.
More reading:
A plagued past; Byculla zoo now pins hopes on makeover
BMC to go ahead with zoo upgradation plan
Blood, stool sampling on at Byculla zoo
‘Why is hippo death big news when humans die after best treatment?’
On the subject of completely irrelevant hippo trivia, here is an article I found on how hippos are helping scientists study brain sizes of island-dwelling creatures. Huh? you say. Just read on.
“Ancient Madagascan hippos have shed light on the origins of the small brain of the 1-metre-tall human, known as the ‘hobbit’.
By examining the skulls of extinct Madagascan hippos, scientists at the Natural History Museum discovered that dwarfed mammals on islands evolved much smaller brains in relation to their body size.” Read the entire article…
Weird. There is a cute little cat running around outside my house with the biggest set of nuggets you’ve ever seen. I’ve been trying to catch him so I can spirit him off to the vet for a much needed neutering. Then I read an article about a hippo who just had an unsuccessful castration.
Named Lieber, the five-year-old hippo lived in a crowded Israeli zoo where efforts were being made to control population growth. Tragically, Lieber’s heart stopped after his second dose of anesthetic. Lieber was one of 40 hippos, one of the largest captive herds in the world, according to zoo spokespeople. Aggressive males are typically castrated to keep them sweet and agreeable.
Below, two videos about the incident:
Hippos are known to react unpredictably to anesthesia. Luckily for me, cats do not. So watch out, little orange kitty – I’m coming for you!
We are delighted to announce that we now joined the legions of craftspeople who are selling their wares on Etsy. That’s right, we have opened our own Etsy store which you can see at HippoMojo.etsy.com. Etsy, in case you don’t know, is a website for sales of handcrafted items. Our first item is pictured below, a set of earrings in red and gold.
Semi-precious stone hippo earrings
We hope you’ll check out our first item for sale and check back with us periodically as we post more products.
I found this story recently on BBC news:
“Two rare bronze statues of hippos, commissioned by the late animal park owner John Aspinall, have been stolen from the grounds of a house in Kent.
The statues, one of a full hippo and the other of the head of a hippo, are worth £15,000 and were made in Cape Town, South Africa.
Only two sets were ever made. The other is on display at Port Lympne animal park, which Mr Aspinall founded.
The statues were stolen from a property on the outskirts of Canterbury.
Police said its owner did not want its exact location to be disclosed.
Easily recognisible
The statues were stolen between 1900 BST on Wednesday and 1100 BST on Thursday.
Det Con Gary Titherly said the statues were easily recognisable and appealed for anyone with information to come forward.
“Due to the sheer weight of the bronzes they would have been difficult to move and more than one person would have been involved in the crime,” he said.
“The thieves appear to have taken them with an amount of care, which leads me to believe that they are in one piece.
“They are very unique and may well be in storage for possible sale at a later date.”
Millionaire Mr Aspinall died in 2000 at the age of 74. “
Here’s the link to the original story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/8041646.stm. I just hope they don’t come looking in my backyard for these babies! Not that I took them or anything. Really. I haven’t been to England in years.
Hippo Mojo recently learned of a fabulous trip taken by Margaret Martin, self-styled godmother to famous and tame hippo Jessica of South Africa. Margaret was kind enough to share an account of her adventure with us.
I am the Godmother of a hippopotamus! You did hear me correctly. My Godchild is Jessica The Hippo you may know from the Animal Planet documentary by the same name.
Just recently, I returned from a trip to So. Africa to celebrate her ninth birthday. It’s hard to believe she is such a big girl now. In fact, her forays into the house have been impaired by the fact it is now a very tight squeeze for her to make it through the door. I guess that was inevitable. She now weighs about a ton.
Just about a month before I left for my VERY long journey half way around the world, I sent a package of goodies for my dear friends Tonie and Shirley Joubert who are Jessica’s human Mom and Dad. Among the gifts was a cute hippo shaped cake pan I found on eBay. Shirley baked a beautiful chocolate cake and set it on the counter to cool while I made some Rice Krispies and marshmallow treats for Jessica. She loves marshmallows. That hippo loves anything sweet. She has a really big sweet tooth. Anyway, I went off to bed. When I got up in the morning there was the cake on the counter covered with this gooey mess. I do realize this is a “you had to be there” storie, but picture this cake with chocolate icing running down the sides. I just stared at it and finally asked, “What happened to the cake?” I am not quite sure what Shirley’s answer was because we were laughing too hard. But, I do think I mentioned that it would have been a good idea to let the icing cool before putting it on the cake. All I can say is it is a good thing that looks cannot change the taste and that Jessica is not a cake decorating aficionado. It was a funny moment and I am sorry I did not think to take a photo.
I arrived in Hoedspruit, where Jessica lives, two days after I left Oregon, but I was wide awake and anxious to get to their home in the African bush to meet my baby girl in person. What an incredible creature. I am quite sure she may be an angel sent from the heavens to spread love and joy to all she meets, and she meets a lot of people. They come from all over the world on a pilgrimage to visit this amazing hippo. Each are touched in a very special way and the experience has changed them for life. Everyday I was there, people came to feed her corn and give her tea. Tonie will give a bottle to different people and Jessica will go from one to the other drinking a little at a time so to give everyone a chance to feed her. She sounds like a washing machine when she drinks. When the tea is gone she likes to suck on the bottle until she is so full of air she actually rises higher in the water.
She will spend much of the day in her river, but comes up for afternoon tea and corn, and then back again in the evening for bed. When she wakes up in the morning she goes off to the river, but comes back for her morning breakfast. As she approaches the house, she grunts out her greetings which are followed by a series of vocalizations I can only compare to a horse whinny. Tonie, Shirley and Jess talk to each other like they understand each word, and I am not all together sure they do not. Jessica is tri-lingual. She speaks hippo, English and Afrikaans. They tend to speak Afrikaans to her.
She has many dog pals in her family. They are all bull terriers. I am not sure if Jessica just thinks of them a very small hippos. They love her. The minute she lays on her mattress at bed time, they climb all over her as if they had just conquered Everest. One evening one of them got stuck between Jessica and the house which sent Tonie out to the rescue. He was a little squashed, but none the worse for wear. The price one pays for sleeping next to a hippopotamus.
Jessica does live in the wild, and she makes forays to visit the nearby hippo pod. She even has had a couple of gentlemen callers. Now that she is reaching maturity, Tonie and Shirley are hoping to become Grandparents. That will be a special moment.
Even though the Joubert home is in the middle of a very large game farm, Jessica shows no sign of leaving home. Hippos are very family orientated animals and Jess has a wonderful thing going. Nightly massages, a comfortable mattress, great food and a very devoted family. That little hippo is not going anywhere.
Tonie is a man of many talents, built there lovely home and another large structure that is referred to as the Tree House. Maybe that is because part of it is actually built into the trees. It is incredible. They at times, use it as a Bed & Breakfast. Should any of you make the journey to South Africa to meet Jessica, be sure to ask if you can stay at the Tree House should you be planning to stay in the area.
The city of Hoedspruit is the gateway to the famous Kruger National Park. One of South Africa’s crown jewels. I did not take the time to go there on this trip because I was sooooo focused on Jessica, but I do understand it is a wonderful showcase of African wildlife. The Joubert’s game farm is full of wonderful wildlife as well. Recently a baby giraffe was born there. The farm is part of the natural migration path for animals going in and out of Kruger.
There is also a 1400 year old Baobab tree on the farm. Wow, it is really big. You could set up residence in one of them. I come from California and have seen the giant Redwoods many times, but some Baobabs could possibly be larger in circumference. Not taller, but maybe some of them are as big around. That is saying something since I have driven a car through a carved out Redwood. I had wanted to see a Baobab since I was in grade school. There had been a photo of one in our geography book. I was impressed then, and I am even more impressed now that I have seen one up close.
When it came time to leave I was naturally very sad. Shortly after I boarded the small commuter plane to return to Johannesburg’s International Airport, we climbed above the clouds. I noticed that some were spiking quite high. Several hundred feet into the air. I rested my head back and closed my eyes trying not to cry. For some reason I opened them and looked out the window to see this huge cloud shooting upward. To one side there appeared a perfectly shaped hippo head. Eye, ears, nostrils and mouth. You would have thought it had been carved from marble by one of the Masters. I just could not believe my eyes. I was very angry at myself for having packed the camera thinking there was nothing left to take pictures of. That was too bad. It would have been a million dollar shot. I really do not care what other people might think, but I am sure it was Jessica saying goodbye and telling me that she would be forever in my heart. And, she will be.
Well, I have taken up a lot of your time, but I wanted you to hear about my wonderful trip. Should any of you make it to So. Africa, be sure to stop in for a visit with Jessica. You heart will be touched by an angle and that is an experience you will that will stay with you for a lifetime. She is truly one of God’s chosen ones.
Best Regards,
Margaret Martin
This is a nice little movie about Jessica the hippo:
Holy Hippos! Obviously, we here at Hippo Mojo have had our big heads and bulgy eyes submerged under cool water for far too long. Yesterday a yucky email from a bad person prompted us to roar out of the river and stomp up the riverbank to fight off our enemies. No, not crocodiles, something far worse: spammers! That’s right, my fellow hippopotami, evil spambots crawled up out of the primordial ooze they subsist in and mounted a serious offensive on Hippo Mojo’s forum. We were shocked to find 6,500 users and over 2,000 messages, none of which had anything to do with our beloved hippopotamus and all of which had to do with icky subjects better left unmentioned.
Our chubby hippo paws raced over the keyboard deleting messages in bulk. But the messages didn’t stop – no, the spambots are strong and crafty and continued to slip by us—with user names like “sEJHbXsmd” and “qUwMwEdSW”—at an alarming rate of about 40 per day!!! Frantically, we consulted the help archives of our software – how could we stop these Spambots dead? A few solutions came to light and we implemented them as fast as our fat hippo bodies would move.
Unfortunately, some drastic measures had to be taken. For safety’s sake, we decided to remove ALL of our users for fear that their emails had been harvested and would be used for nefarious purposes. Innocent hippos were dropping like flies against the sinister Spambots!
Okay, so we only had 4 registered users and one of them was my mother so it wasn’t really all that bad. Our apologies, though, to those 4 loyal hippo friends – sorry we had to cut you off but it was for your own good! Please, please, please come back and sign up again. And this time, post something to a board!!! We’d really like to hear from you.
And to all those Spambots out there: we double dog dare you to try to infiltrate our forum again. If you do, we’ll whirl our little tails and spray a plume of poop at you! You have no idea how awesome is the force called Hippo Power.
If you are looking for a great gift item for your favorite hippo fan, look no further than this mother & baby hippo trinket box. It’s cute, functional, and fun. Hand painted and created of high polished enamel, the box is adorned with inlaid Swarovski crystals.
Mother & Baby Hippo Trinket Box
Four zebras died in early March after cape buffalos were introduced to their enclosure at the Greater Vancouver Zoo. The spooked zebras ran themselves to death, one in hours, the remaining three a few days later.
The zoo has a troubled history. In 2006, the zoo was charged for the mistreatment of a young hippo named Hazina who, having outgrown her pool, had been held for over a year in a concrete holding pen with no outdoor access.
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