An adorable baby hippo at the zoo in Richmond recently got a name, Petunia, and video shows she’s practicing her swimming — a sign that she’s reaching her age-appropriate milestones.
The pygmy hippo calf was born in early December at the Metro Richmond facility and keepers describe her as brave, confident and spunky. Petunia enjoys getting her energy out by splashing in the water and running around her enclosure, zookeepers said.
She was named last month after more than 18,000 people participated in voting on a selection of eight possibilities.
Hippo calves have a natural instinct to swim but keepers lowered the water levels in the pool so the baby’s head could stay above the water. Gradually, as Petunia is getting more comfortable with playing in the water, they’re raising the water levels so she can “bob around more.” Video shows her taking her first swim.
Petunia spends her days with her mom in the indoor pool area and most mornings she heads straight into the water, her caretakers said.
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“She’s a very confident hippo,” said Mariah Megginson, a zookeeper. “She’s adventurous. She explores her enclosure and she often leads the way with her mom following her to the pool.”
At night, she’s brought inside with her mom, Iris, because she’s still nursing.
Like any little one, keepers said, she can sometimes be mischievous. Sometimes she won’t come out of the water and wants to keep playing and jumping in the pool, keepers said. When the weather gets warmer and Petunia gets a little bigger, the mother-daughter pair will go to their outdoor habitat.
The Richmond Zoo is the only one in the state that has pygmy hippos. Petunia is the second pygmy hippo calf born there. In 2020, Violet was born there, but she left a year later to go to another facility.
Pygmy hippos are smaller than a common river hippo and they’re considered to be more rare. They’re native to parts of West Africa and are an endangered species, as there are fewer than 2,500 of them in the wild as of 2015, according to zookeepers in Richmond.
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Their population has been hurt by several factors, including predators like crocodiles, leopards and pythons. Plus, their habitat has been impacted by development of land and water pollution and they’ve been hunted for their meat, according to Jessica Gring, one of the facility’s lead zookeepers.
“The area they can live is getting smaller and smaller,” Gring said.
Megginson said Petunia is growing fast. A week after her birth she weighed 15 pounds and now she’s around 50 pounds. She enjoys eating potatoes, carrots and greens.
“She’s becoming more active and spending more time away from mom,” Megginson said.
Pygmy hippos at full maturity weigh between 300 and 600 pounds and they’re solitary animals in adulthood.
For now, caretakers said Petunia will stay with her mom for at least a year. The facility is working on building a new, larger hippo exhibit and they will decide later if Petunia stays in Richmond or goes to another facility as part of a nationwide breeding program for pygmy hippos.
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