Prague’s ZOO has been keeping hippopotamuses since 1933. The first baby hippo was successfully bred already in 1977.
“The hippo calf was born at around 10.15 AM. on Wednesday; Maruška the mother was being kept separate from the father for some time in the inside arena of the Pavilion of large mammals. The cute calf is full of life and soon after birth it drank some milk. All being well we would like to introduce him to the public by the end of next week,” said Mr Pavel Brandl, mammal keeper from Prague’s ZOO.
Maruška, the proud mother, was born in Ostrava’s ZOO on 29th December 1999, she came to Prague after the floods in 2002 when she replaced the female hippo Lentilka who tragically died during the floods. Tomík was a successfully bred male and was born in 2006 and left Prague’s ZOO in 2010.
“The father hippo Slavek is one of the most famous animals in Prague’s ZOO and he also became a face of the campaign Meet Each Other (Seznamte se),” added ZOO’s director Miroslav Bobek.
Slávek is born in Prague on 30th October 1984 and he is a son of famous hippo Zuzana who came to Prague from Berlin ZOO in 1944. Slávek has so far has fathered two daughters called Bohunka and Barborka and two males called Onyx and Tomík.
