I posted this in a comment about a month ago, and was encouraged to make it into a thread. Finally getting around to it, as I think it is a topic worth discussing. All measurements are approximations collected by measuring and comparing Google Earth images across multiple years. While imperfect, it gives us a pretty good ballpark figure.
There is a long, currently ongoing, history of zoos largely neglecting the terrestrial needs of hippos. It is not a new trend, but neither is it a dying tradition. Rather in many cases it seems like zoos have gone in the opposite direction, focusing solely on the aquatic nature of hippos.
For example my local Woodland Park Zoo, until recently, had one of the largest outdoor hippo yards I can think of in the country. Approximately ~4600sf of land area. It was shut down just this year, with our remaining Hippo Lily sent to the often exalted San Diego Zoo. Its hippo yard has a land area of 1185sf, with no access gate to any rhino yard...
This is not as isolated example. Milwaukee just this year spent 13.5 million to "upgrade" its hippos from ~3900sf, down to less than 2000. Back in 2018 Fort Worth did actually upgraded its hippos, from a paltry 700sf, to a luxurious 1700. Cincinnati Zoo is currently housing 4 hippos on 1800sf of land area, in an exhibit opened in just 2016. The current zoological ethos it seems, at least in the AZA, is to treat hippos as fully aquatic animals. This is despite hippos spending nearly half of the time terrestrially grazing in the wild.
I'm not sure which zoo did it first, maybe it was Berlin in 1997 with its breathtaking dome exhibit. But at some point in the early 2000s, zoos discovered what an incredible spectacle, and lucrative crowd draw, underwater hippo viewing could be. Seeing a 1.5 ton mammal swim weightlessly through crystal clear water, surrounded in shoals of cichlids of every color, is truly a sight like no other. These exhibits aren't cheap to build, the powerful filtration needed to keep crystal clear water with such messy inhabitants often pushes these exhibits into the double digit millions to construct. And yet despite the cost, I cant think of a single newly constructed hippo exhibit in the past two decades that hasnt been designed around underwater viewing. And with this, the land portion of the Hippo exhibit has become a neglected afterthought, often barely even visible to the public.
There is a long, currently ongoing, history of zoos largely neglecting the terrestrial needs of hippos. It is not a new trend, but neither is it a dying tradition. Rather in many cases it seems like zoos have gone in the opposite direction, focusing solely on the aquatic nature of hippos.
For example my local Woodland Park Zoo, until recently, had one of the largest outdoor hippo yards I can think of in the country. Approximately ~4600sf of land area. It was shut down just this year, with our remaining Hippo Lily sent to the often exalted San Diego Zoo. Its hippo yard has a land area of 1185sf, with no access gate to any rhino yard...
This is not as isolated example. Milwaukee just this year spent 13.5 million to "upgrade" its hippos from ~3900sf, down to less than 2000. Back in 2018 Fort Worth did actually upgraded its hippos, from a paltry 700sf, to a luxurious 1700. Cincinnati Zoo is currently housing 4 hippos on 1800sf of land area, in an exhibit opened in just 2016. The current zoological ethos it seems, at least in the AZA, is to treat hippos as fully aquatic animals. This is despite hippos spending nearly half of the time terrestrially grazing in the wild.
I'm not sure which zoo did it first, maybe it was Berlin in 1997 with its breathtaking dome exhibit. But at some point in the early 2000s, zoos discovered what an incredible spectacle, and lucrative crowd draw, underwater hippo viewing could be. Seeing a 1.5 ton mammal swim weightlessly through crystal clear water, surrounded in shoals of cichlids of every color, is truly a sight like no other. These exhibits aren't cheap to build, the powerful filtration needed to keep crystal clear water with such messy inhabitants often pushes these exhibits into the double digit millions to construct. And yet despite the cost, I cant think of a single newly constructed hippo exhibit in the past two decades that hasnt been designed around underwater viewing. And with this, the land portion of the Hippo exhibit has become a neglected afterthought, often barely even visible to the public.
