Pygmy Hippo - Oct 1975

Is this a pygmy hippo? It looks more like a regular river hippopotamus.

Thanks for all of these photos as well. Adelaide Zoo is almost unrecognisable today.

Actually, now that you mention it and I look more closely - I think you might be right there! A bit too big for a pygmy!

Definately a common hippo...

There is no way any zoo in Australia today would exhibit a hippo behind that flimsy piece of wire!

I think this sort of mesh is used for some of the aviaries at Adelaide, so I don't know how it would hold hippos.

It might be that the wire we see there is only above the pool area, so largely out of reach of the hippos? Difficult to tell from the photo.

This hippo's name was "Newsboy", so named because the Adelaide evening paper "The News" organised a fund to buy him from Auckland Zoo, where he had been born. He arrived in Adelaide in 1934 and was a popular exhibit until his death in 1977.

He was definitely held behind a strong fence. The wire netting in the photo was a screen between him and the public. It was there because Adelaide's previous hippo died when some fool threw a large rubber ball into his open mouth and blocked his intestine.

Thanks for that info Ara The same thing hapened to a male at auckland and he died aswell so sad and stupid of peolpe

Does any one no when Newsboy was born and how he died and if he ever breed thnaks

I did hear a story, not sure if it the same hippo, that a golf ball was thrown by a child into the mouth of a hippo, which it choked on I think. Not sure of all the details of that, but that is how I think Newsboy died. I think soon after, money was raised by the newspaper to obtain some new hippos if I am not mistaken.

Yep. The pair of hippos currently at Adelaide Zoo were bought around that time as adults from Ashton's Lion Safari, (which was closing down) at Bacchus Marsh, Victoria.