Hippo Mom Bibi, Daughter Fiona Get Close Again At Cincinnati Zoo

CINCINNATI, OH — In interactions among zoo animals, it’s important to know what you’re looking at: Among Cincinnati Zoo caregivers, seeing baby hippopotamus Fiona practically crawl inside her mother Bibi’s wide open mouth eased months of concern that Fiona might never completely act like a hippo.

The seemingly affectionate gesture is huge, hippopotamus-sized news. Fiona has had a rough go of it since she was born six weeks prematurely at the zoo on Jan. 24, weighing just 29 pounds — about half the previous record for the lowest birth weight for a member of her species, normally born between 55 and 120 pounds.

“This interaction might make you nervous, but Fiona's care team was happy to see Bibi patiently allowing Fiona to mouth her tongue, tusks and even the back of her throat,” read a Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens Facebook post on Monday. “Bibi got down on the ground and offered her whole mouth for exploration! Hippos use their mouths to act tough, play, show affection, and explore the world around them (we think Bibi likes the mouth massage)!” (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. Also, if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Bibi and Fiona were already famous among Facebook fans who had shared the post more than 12,500 times, given it 47,000 likes and viewed it more than 750 times by late morning Tuesday. Fiona made history in utero in the first-ever ultrasound image of a Nile hippopotamus fetus. Zoo officials had been keeping a watch on Bibi since August, when she and Henry got together, and the ultrasound confirmed her pregnancy.

In February, Fiona refused to nurse, and human caretakers stepped in. 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 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, said 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 be 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 swim, 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.

“Though it is a relatively constant concern, this is easily one of the more enjoyable tasks for the care team and also provides for a unique bonding experience between the baby hippo and her many caretakers,” Rice wrote

“Though we love to provide Fiona’s almost hourly lotion massages, we hope the need for them will diminish as her health improves and she begins spending more and more time in the water.”

That happened later in March.

Of course, the bigger and stronger Fiona grew, the greater the dangers to the human care staff. She was still a hippopotamus, after all, and her “instinct-filled brain is hardwired to interact with other hippos, not humans, so naturally, that is how she has interacted with her care staff from Day 1,” Rice wrote in a March blog post.

Caregivers were able to manage it when baby Fiona opened her mouth wide and tossed her head — a gesture among hippos that can signal to others in the herd everything from “back off, I need my space” to “let’s play” to “who’s in charge here?” — but as she grows, “it will definitely become more of a problem for care staff,” Rice wrote.

Fiona also liked to snuggle, another natural instinct. They crawl onto their mothers’ backs for a safe place to take a nap in normal circumstances. In human care, she sought out the laps of her caregivers. At just under 100 pounds in March, “this is already becoming a bit challenging … and will only become more of a struggle and potential danger as she grows bigger and stronger.”

Fiona’s caregivers don’t know the extent to which the bond with humans might affect her interactions with other hippos, Rice wrote, explaining hippos are gregarious, but not necessarily social. They live with each other in groups, but they may not form social bonds, she wrote.

“Since Fiona spent her imprinting period (the first 10-12 days of life) with humans instead of her mother Bibi, we do believe she has formed social bonds with the care staff instead,” Rice wrote. “She very obviously feels comfortable around us and seems to enjoy and seek out our companionship, and it is likely that she will maintain those positive associations with humans for the rest of her life. The good news is that her special bond with people should not significantly impact how she interacts with other hippos in the future, who will likely be viewed as friendly neighbors sharing space and resources. So in terms of integrating her into a bloat of hippos, her untraditional team of moms should not negatively impact her transition.”

In April, attempts to reintroduce Fiona to Bibi and her father, Henry, didn’t go so well, and caretakers adopted a slower, more methodical approach.

Bibi’s responses to her daughterranged from disinterest to “a sort of ‘side eye’ ” she gives Fiona when the young hippo gets too close to her food, typically followed by an aggressive display, Rice wrote. And “once in a while,” Bibi will lay next to the barriers separating her and Fiona, “seeming to want to be as close to Fiona as possible,” Rice wrote.

Fiona appeared similarly disposed. When she watched her munch on hay in the next-door stall, she occasionally wandered to her own pile of may for a few nibbles. She might seem oblivious to her mother’s presence one day and frightened of her the next. But on the morning the care staff discovered Bibi and Fiona had slept in the exact spot on opposite sides of the barrier, they had hope.

“Incidents like that one give the care team hopeful optimism for a happy reunion, but at this point the range of reactions from both hippos has definitely been an indication to the care team that we will have to take the process very slowly if we are to have a successful reunion between mother and daughter,” Rice wrote in April.

“In order to facilitate bonding and safe interaction between Fiona and the adults, our hard-working maintenance team is revamping Fiona’s indoor space once again to alter the protective barriers, removing the space between so that Fiona can actually get nose-to-nose with Bibi and Henry. Every night, the hippos will have an opportunity to interact with each other safely and on their own terms, and the hope is that this nightly interaction will help establish familiarity and comfort with one another until Fiona is ready to share the same space as the adult hippos.”

In May, Fiona began exploring the zoo’s outdoor hippopotamus habitat, her future home. The zoo’s care staff wore scuba gear to be ready to respond if she had trouble in the outdoor pools.

Photo via Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens YouTube video