00:00Here at the San Diego Zoo today we had a birth of a river hippo from our female foo nanny at around 1130 and we're extremely excited.
00:19We've been waiting for about eight months, which is the gestation of a river hippo.
00:24Our male Otis, who's from the LA Zoo, came down here to join our female foo nanny to breed so we've gone through a lot and got them together so now we've just been counting down the days and doing our best to try to anticipate the birth and she actually beat us by about a week.
00:40Everything is going great. The baby, when it was born, came out as a natural birth. A lot of hippos give birth in the water. The baby came out, was under water, came up, took a breath, and then actually he was really close to the ramp going out of the pool and actually walked right up the ramp.
00:55Mom's been extremely attentive, which is perfect. So now we're just waiting to see that the calf is going to nurse from mom.
01:02We'll back off because she'll be defensive if we get a little too close, so hopefully the calf will start nursing and then over the next couple of days we'll just play it by ear on how mom feels and if she wants to come inside and shift inside, we can get a better view of the calf and assess it.
01:18Our key focus was that foo nanny was comfortable and we barricaded off the lower section so people weren't too close in her area.
01:35In the Lost Forest area, you can come and meet our animal care staff. Our zookeepers will be out and about and you can learn more about our hippos and other animals.
01:43He's doing great. He's growing like a weed. He was about 100 pounds when he was born back in January and he's currently a little over 500 pounds.
01:59So he's really getting up there. His growth is an average for a captive born hippo, so we're expecting him to just keep on going until he reaches his full weight.
02:09His lessons from mom, I would say, are challenging for him. She is often pushing him around the pool and we get calls from the guests sometimes saying that she's being a little aggressive with him.
02:27However, that is her way to teach him where to go and where not to go, what to do and what not to do.
02:32His personality is, oh, he's funny. He's very funny and I'm sure that all babies are funny in their own way, but he's very energetic as far as large hippos go.
02:49You know, they lumber around sort of large moving, but Ed Hama has these little quirks where we call them ticks or he kind of moves his head and jerks his body around and pops like a chicken.
03:00It's actually quite funny and very cute. What I like most about Ed Hama is my time with him to interact with him one on one.
03:07Often times when I'm cleaning the exhibit next to his, he'll follow me along the fence line and we kind of play tag together.
03:13It's quite funny. We were just doing it again the other day where he would run up to the fence and I would touch his nose and then he would run away and come back.
03:22And he's very curious about his keepers and so he comes up and he wants to interact with you and he enjoys the tactile touching that we give him.
03:32And so I really enjoy just working with him one on one.
03:41So with three hippos, we do not put our male Otis in with Mpunani and the Kappa Dama, not yet at this point.
03:48So right now what we do is we rotate them between the exhibit pool and the inside.
03:52So inside the barn, they actually do have their own pool so they can hang out back there and get enrichment.
03:58So we do have to rotate them at this point.
04:01So we want mom to be able to just spend the time with the Dama and not have to worry about any other hippos.
04:06So she can just do the job that she's doing really well.
04:08So usually if you come to the exhibit at nine o'clock in the morning is when they're released out onto exhibit and usually a little bit more active and playful.
