The hippo could still bite the keeper in half in this set-up.
I doubt that any place, at least in the west, would allow keepers to share a physical space with hippos without barriers, given how dangerous they are. I could be wrong, but it seems to be that it would be very unwise to keep hippos other than with protected contact.
@KevinB - the photo above doesn't seem particularly dangerous - the hippo quite clearly could not "bite the keeper in half" in the pictured situation unless he decided to place himself into the hippo's mouth.
But even in the Zoochat galleries you can find western examples of keepers interacting with hippos, e.g. below at the Ekaterinberg Zoo:
The original photo (above) is something that I've seen happen at the Los Angeles Zoo and I was part of a session in 2017 where I was able to pet a Common Hippo on the head and give it some good scratches while the keepers piled its mouth with food. It was all done above the ledge of the enclosure...similar to this particular photo:
Okay, I guess I made some incorrect assumptions about hippopotamus safety, and so maybe the ledge of the pool would provide a high enough degree of safety.
Still, touching a hippopotamus (or letting visitors do so) even in a set-up like this looks very risky to me.
@KevinB Not risky with well known animals. The hippo in this picture probably could not get much further out of the pool. And like elephants quite happy to have their tongue patted/stroked.
This is probably the safesty way a keeper could check the hippos mouth, in a pool at the edge with a sheer face.
I don't actually see much risk for the keeper, once it's probably used to the animal, and it's probably trained to develop this practice, but I honestly worry about that fencing... There's a little girl with her head inside the exhibit, and differently from the keeper, she doesn't know the animal's individualities, nor the correct practices needed for staying near to wild animals. IMO, visitors are quite in danger when aproaching to this enclosure, unless there's another barrier that I somehow can't see...
@David Matos Mendes the hippos don’t have access to any of the land that relates to that barrier. The hippos are contained at the front by the pool wall, and at the back by their house. Their land space is in between the house and the pool, and to the side of the house with keeper only access. All in all it was more or less as safe as any hippo exhibit.
@animalman0341
Oh, I see. Well, having that in mind, this enclosure is much probably as safe as usual hippo exhibits indeed. Actually, the "open view" barrer kind is pretty interesting.
