Slávek the Hippopotamus

Meet Them!


You might not expect to find a gentleman among hippopotami – but this three-and-a-half-ton native son of Prague has earned a reputation as a chivalrous and kindhearted male who is exceedingly indulgent not just towards females, but also towards calves.


Origin
Slávek, a hippopotamus, was born on October 30, 1984, as Prague Zoo’s ninth native-born hippo. His mother Zaira and his father Zulu came from Budapest Zoo and, apart from Slávek, they raised Prague’s very first hippo baby as well as a pair of twins – something utterly extraordinary in hippopotami. Slávek himself has sired several offspring. In 2012 he traded up and moved into a modern hippo house in the upper zoo.

Temperament
Slávek has a calm and peaceful disposition. Despite his massive bulk (his estimated weight is 3.5 tons, which puts him in the same weight class as Indian elephant females), he does not like to throw his weight around needlessly. Quite the contrary – he is exceptional in that he tolerates calves, which means that we do not have to isolate him when his partner is raising babies. Such tolerance is rarely seen in hippos in zoo captivity. He has truly earned the sobriquet of “gentleman”.


Flood
The biggest drama of Slávek’s life was, undoubtedly, the August 2002 flood. The entire Pavilion of Big Mammals, Slávek’s home at the time, ended up completely under water. Slávek survived; his partner and his daughter did not. He spent the entire flood inside the pavilion, and, by good fortune, did not chance upon an open door that led outside – had that happened, Slávek could have escaped and come into contact with people, which would have been an unacceptable risk, given that hippos are dangerous animals. One day, however, his keepers had no idea whether Slávek was still alive. Not a trace of him was to be found. An intensive and hazardous search inside the pavilion turned up nothing; everyone thought we had lost him. Imagine our surprise, then, when two volunteer rescuers, having smashed their way through a metal door on the pavilion’s gallery, happened upon Slávek, who had been stranded in a most unlikely place. It appears that he had been swimming around the entire flooded pavilion – which had been home also to rhinoceroses and elephants – and finally made for the space above the elephant stalls. There, near the ceiling, was a gallery for zoo staff, and it was behind the gallery’s railing that Slávek ended up when the water had receded. He did not stay there though. The day after his reappearance he made his way to the other side of the pavilion – to the gallery over the rhinoceros exhibit. There, he butted open a window with his head and, seeming a little out of sorts, set about observing the goings-on outside.

The tricky problem of how to get Slávek down safely was solved thanks to the company Skanska. First, keepers persuaded Slávek to leave the area over the rhinoceros stables for a while. Then, a jackhammer was used to make a hole large enough for our flood hero to pass through. Workers then put up an inclined ramp that lead down into the enclosure and Slávek, half willingly, half reluctantly, walked down the ramp to safety. He remained a guest in the rhinoceros stables for a couple of days, as his swimming pool had cracked in several places and needed a thorough overhaul.
There was no pool in the rhinoceros enclosure, and so Slávek was hosed down by anyone who happened to be passing by. The first day the hippo refused to eat anything, but already on the first night he showed himself nimble enough to climb over the railing between the two rhinoceros enclosures, demonstrating clearly that there was nothing wrong with him. At last there came the glorious day when Slávek could return to his home. Firefighters filled his pool with water – and Slávek inaugurated it by first taking a little sip. When the water level had visibly dropped, the hippo finally decided that it was time for some blissful wallowing in the pool. That fall, we set about looking for a new female to cheer up our star-crossed lonely pachyderm. And we got lucky: as early as at the end of November we were welcoming to Prague a three-year-old female named Maruška, who had been born in Ostrava Zoo. She was much smaller than Slávek and initially, they were not exactly on peaceful terms, but gradually Slávek conceded that the thumbling who was sharing his home was indeed his bride-to-be and not just some calf – and they have been a happy couple ever since. So much so that in 2013 Maruška was already raising their second calf.

Slávek the Hippopotamus (c) Tomas Adamec


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Total zoo area 58 ha
Total exhibit area 50 ha
Number of pavilions 15
Number of exhibits over 150
Number of employees 240

 

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