http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/whos-a-lucky-hippo/story-e6frg8gf-1111117975793
FOR now, Monifa is your typical newborn.
“She is just amazing, she doesn’t look real. She is cute, fragile and tiny, hopefully I don’t have to part with her too soon,” her doting surrogate mum, zookeeper Renae Zammit, said at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo yesterday.
“She’s very, very special.”
At her birth three weeks ago, the pygmy hippopotamus weighed less than 4kg. Monifa has since gained 2kg, but still measures no more than 50cm.
She won’t be so cute for long.
In a couple of years, Monifa will weigh in at just under 300kg, and is unlikely to be nuzzling up to anyone.
Pygmy hippopotamus are nocturnal, secretive, forest-dwelling animals and are rarely ever seen, being one-fifth the size of their larger cousins.
There are estimated to be fewer than 3000 still in the wild in the swamps and forests of western Africa. They spend almost their entire lives alone, only ever coming together to mate.
Because they are so rarely ever spotted in the wild, most of the research recorded about the species has been learned from those cared for in zoos.
Monifa – which means “I am lucky” in Nigerian – was separated at birth from her mother and father for her own safety. In any case she would have rejected her mother by the time she was a year old.
“This is the only period of her life when she will interact with her keepers, or indeed with any other living creature,” Ms Zammit said.
The zookeeper said they had hoped that the baby’s mother Petre would be able to raise her, but signs of aggression towards her daughter finished that.
“She definitely would have died if we didn’t step in,” Ms Zammit said.
Monifa is the first of her kind to be born at Taronga Zoo in 23 years.