00:08Here at the San Diego Zoo today we had a birth of a river hippo from our female
00:13foonanny at around 1130 and we're extremely excited. We've been waiting for about eight
00:21months which is the gestation of a river hippo. Our male Otis who's from the LA Zoo came down
00:27here to join our female foonanny to breed so we've gone through a lot and got them
00:32together so now we've just been counting down the days and doing our best to try
00:37to anticipate the birth and she actually beat us by about a week. Everything is
00:42going great the baby when it was born came out as a natural birth a lot of
00:46hippos give birth in the water the baby came out was underwater came up took a
00:50breath and then actually he was really close to the ramp going out of the pool
00:54and actually walked right off the ramp mom's been extremely attentive which is
00:58perfect so now we're just waiting to see that the calf is going to nurse from mom
01:03we'll back off because she'll be defensive if we get a little too close so hopefully
01:08the calf will start nursing and then over the next couple of days we'll just play
01:11it by ear and how mom feels and if she wants to come inside and shift inside we
01:16can get a better view of the calf and assess it
01:22our key focus was that foonanny was comfortable and we barricaded off the
01:27lower section so people weren't too up in it too close in her area
01:35in the lost forest area you can come and meet our animal care staff our zoo
01:39keepers will be out and out and about and you can learn more about our hippos and
01:47other animals
01:51he's doing great he's growing like a weed he was about a hundred pounds when he
01:56was born back in January and he's currently a little over 500 pounds so
02:00he's he's really getting up there his growth is an average average for a
02:05captive-born hippo so we're expecting him to just keep on going until he reaches
02:09his full weight
02:16his lessons from mom I would say are challenging for him she is often
02:21pushing him around the pool and we get calls from the guests sometimes saying
02:26that she's being a little aggressive with him however that is her way to teach him
02:30where to go where not to go what to do what not to do
02:39his personality is oh he's funny he's very funny and I'm sure that all babies are
02:46funny in their own way but he's very energetic as far as large hippos go you
02:50know they lumber around sort of large moving but it Hama has these little
02:54quirks where we call them ticks and he kind of moves his head and jerks his body
02:59around and pops like a chicken it's actually quite funny and very cute what
03:03I like most about it Hama is my time with him to interact with him one-on-one
03:07oftentimes when I'm cleaning the exhibit next to his he'll follow me along the
03:11fence line and we kind of play tag together it's quite funny we were just
03:16doing it again the other day where he would run up to the fence and I would
03:20touch his nose and then he would run away and come back and he's very curious
03:24about his keepers and so he he comes up and he wants to interact with you and he
03:29enjoys the tactile touching that we give him and so I really enjoy just working
03:35with him one-on-one
03:41so with three hippos we do not put our male otis in with mom
03:45for nani and the kappa dama not yet at this point so right now what we do is we
03:50rotate them between the exhibit pool and the inside so inside the barn they
03:55actually do have their own pool so they can hang out back there and get
03:58enrichment so we do have to rotate them at this point so we want mom to be able to
04:04just spend the time with the dama and not have to worry about any other hippos so
04:07she can just do the job that she's doing really well so usually if you come to the
04:12exhibit at 9 o'clock in the morning is when they're released out onto exhibit and
04:15they're usually a little more active and playful
04:34with the
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