Yi Qi
Well-Known Member
There are Greater Vancouver Zoo and Safari Niagara, who have big outdoor pools. Calgary and Granby have underwater viewing, with the latter having a renovation at the moment.
Hippos in USA zoos
- Thread starter savetherhino
- Start date
-
- Tags
- hippopotamus exhibit
Perhaps US zoos would be allowed to catch some in Columbia they want to reduce the numbers they and are looking at options I believe the numbers could be as high as 100. Did one not come out on a Mexican beach around one year ago?
The local Colombians love their hippos and have stopped any effort by the government to slow their spread.
I can not see this lasting long term until the government do something to stem the numbers perhaps the locals could capture some of the younger animals and sell to overseas zoos as a business?
The situation is absolutely unsustainable longterm!
(Colombia)
I am not sure how the AZA population is actually managed....for now.
(Colombia)
I am not sure how the AZA population is actually managed....for now.
For sure, I would not be to surprised if the army does not move in at some stage and shoot them out , better option to remove and sell to zoos
In all seriousness, my understanding is that the AZA population is broadly sustainable, given that there are about 80 individuals and that hippos live for, on average, at least 40 years, there only need to be 2-3 surviving births per year for the population to be broadly sustainable, which the SSP has been achieving (see San Diego and Dallas in the past year for example). This is obviously a bit of an oversimplification of sustainability, but it is broadly close to accurate.
This *would* be the case, if the age structure was healthy and there was a good number of breeding groups in the country. Unfortunately, a large proportion of hippos in the US are older, there is a shortage of breeding males (Dallas and Cincinnati's breeding males both died recently), and many facilities with breeding-age hippos that are not equipped for breeding... the number of hippos being born is therefore not high enough given the top-heavy age distribution and increasing number of new exhibits, and the genetic diversity of the population is likely to decline without imports. They are not in danger of disappearing from zoos anytime soon, but they may become rarer than in the past.
Are there any facilities in the United States that actually have breeding herds of hippos because most of the facilities I know of only have a breeding pair of hippos.
I know of DAK and St. Louis off the top of my head. Sadly, many zoos dont go for the healthiest route for the herding animals....
Hopefully there will be more
Depends on what number constitutes a herd. Disney's Animal Kingdom has two pods of hippos I believe; I think the number they have is sufficient to call a breeding herd. A very small number of other zoos (Memphis springs to mind) have a breeding trio of one male and two females, which is more than a pair but I'm not sure if you'd call it a herd.
Last I checked Saint Louis only has females, which I believe has been the case for a long time.