Baby Hippo Fiona Photobombs Couple’s Engagement At Cincinnati Zoo

CINCINNATI, OH — Fiona, the famous baby hippopotamus at the Cincinnati Zoo, already has a celebrity profile — she was born prematurely with slim odds of survival, she has her own show, her early life is the subject of an upcoming book and she has her own Facebook page — but the now 10-month-old hippo boosted her status more in an adorable way earlier this month. She photobombed a couple’s engagement picture.

Hayley Roll and Nick Kelble went to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden on Oct. 8 to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their relationship. They were waiting in line to have their photo taken with the famous Fiona when she walked under water to the viewing window — hippos don't swim, but propel themselves up through water when they need to take a breath.

Roll, a radiology technician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, handed her cellphone to another zoo visitor to snap a photo of the couple with Fiona. When she turned her back, Kelble, a student at the University of Cincinnati, dropped down on one knee to propose. She said yes, and the couple plans to marry in 2019 after he graduates, according to reports. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Cincinnati Patch, or click here to find your local Ohio Patch. Like Cincinnati Patch on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Roll, who popped the photo of Fiona photobombing the proposal on Instagram, told The Daily Buzz she and Kelble are are "huge #TeamFiona fans" and have been following the hippo's progress since her complicated birth on Jan. 24, but had never seen her in person.

Often referred to as the "world's most beloved hippopotamus," Fiona weighed only 29 pounds at birth — about half the previous record for the lowest birth weight for a member of her species, normally born between 55 and 120 pounds — and zookeepers and the veterinary staff worried she wouldn't live, according to The Fiona Show Facebook page.

Fiona was raised by humans after she refused to nurse. When she became dehydrated, sick and lethargic in February, the Cincinnati Children's nationally renowned Vascular Access Team rehydrated her. Her infirmary was close enough to smell her parents, Bibi and Henry, but her domain was human populated.

"Preemies have very tiny and unstable veins, and even though our vet team was able to get multiple IVs placed, the veins could not sustain the IV and would blow," Christina Gorsuch, the zoo's curator of mammals, wrote on the zoo's blog. "Lucky for us, we're right next door to a world-class facility with a whole department dedicated to working with difficult veins."

Hand-raising a premature hippo was going to be a difficult undertaking under the best of circumstances, but during Fiona's first of month of life, "every member of our team has been tested professionally and emotionally," Wendy Rice, a member of Fiona’s care team, wrote on the zoo blog, "but Fiona, thankfully, is still alive."

Maintaining Fiona's body temperature at an optimum level was tricky. Being too cold could have been fatal for the Nile hippopotamus, but if her body temperature exceeded 100 degrees, she would start producing what's known as a "blood sweat" — a red-colored, glandular secretion that is a skin moisturizer, water repellent and antibiotic.

A blood sweat would send a wild hippo to a pool of water, where they spend about 16 hours a day. Fiona wasn't strong enough to venture into the water, and neither did her daily medical care regimen leave time for extended pool time. Fiona's skin dried out quickly in an incubator area maintained at about 90 degrees, so caretakers rubbed diluted baby lotion on her skin about every hour.

Predictably, everyone fell instantly in love with Fiona.

She was famous before she was born, though. Mom Bibi was the first hippopotamus to undergo an ultrasound — a difficult feat, given how notoriously difficult hippos are to train.

Photo by Hayley Roll via Instagram, used with permission