Lafone
Well-Known Member
Alright, I've done some (very much surface level) digging and I reckon I've found an answer to our hippo-based queries.
It would appear that in 1967, the year the boat first started running across the lake, the park acquired a group of 4 chimpanzees (assumedly to live on what would later be Nico's island), as well as 3 hippos. Having watched the episode and seen that there's footage of 3 of them in black-and-white, my conclusion is that 3 originally arrived in '67 followed by Spot and Sonia around a decade later. This lines up with the comment about the keepers being able to sit on the other hippos but not the recent two, which already suggested they were separate groups. So I'm guessing it's a mistake in the narration to say 5 arrived at once, and instead it was a maximum of 5 held in one go.
That's enough hippo research for one night
Edit: More excavation of old Zoochat threads has occurred and I've come across this video
from the year after the initial group arrived. Incredible and ever so slightly mental to watch
Enjoying the detective work I have to say. The video is mad - there’s a bloke riding a hippo!
