Common Hippo Exhibit at Cologne, 07/09/10

In the HippoDom - also home to free-flying birds and bats, Nile Crocodiles and a mixed exhibit for Rufous Elephant Shrews and Red-legged Sun Squirrel.

Thank you for posting these excellent photos of the HippoDom. I was at Cologne in the Spring of 2010, and just missed the opening of this house. I'd be interested to hear your verdict on it? From the photos here, I think it looks rather excellent - even if there is a utilitarian quality to the architecture (those exposed pipes in this picture, for example).

A number of flaws in the execution of this interesting exhibit surprised me: terrible water quality in the hippo pool, a waterline set too high to allow any views above water, bee-eaters and hammerkops choosing to perch on the exposed pipes rather than on the branches of the rather crudely-rendered "baobabs," and a discordant "fossil Supercroc" set into the unconvincing mudbanks. I also noted some huge gouges in the acrylic viewing windows from hippos tusks!

The connected outdoor exhibit shared with sitatunga was okay, but not a major improvement over its predecessor in West Berlin.

I would agree that Berlin is the superior hippo exhibit, but there didn't seem to be any water-quality issues at Cologne when I was there.

One odd thing is that the hippos have no outdoor pool, which is another way Berlin scores over Cologne, but I think that's mostly a factor of space as adding a pool on the same footprint would have reduced the available outdoor grassed area to very little indeed.

Basically, it's a very good house, but not my very favourite.

I presume so - Cologne has two huge groups of Northern Carmine Bee-eaters so seem to know what they're doing with them.

No worries! Suddenly occurred to me I never finished this trip off!

As above, I rather like it, but you have to be able to ignore the pipes etc. Not quite a Berlin Hippo house, but very good.

how many hippos total? male or female? names?

Are they permanently always inside?

@ Fossa dude