Hippo enclosure 1

August 2008

is there a ditch betweeen the stone wall and the viewing wall?

Big grazing area! I always love that in a hippo enclosure.

Although its very simple, Whipsnade's is probably the best UK hippo exhibit. The grassy slope gives them a good, clean land area and remains well-drained and dry because of the slope. The photo distorts the land area size a bit though.

I thought it was really too small and would have liked a mud wallow, but the exhibits are okay (btw, it's not hard to have the UK's best hippo exhibit ).

If you're talking about the best hippo exhibit in the UK, I would nominate Marwell: The paddocks only have grass and a dust walllow and the pools are indoors and cover a small area, but they are deep and heated and the paddocks provide hippos with something the hippos simply love: Grazing. This has lead to the best pygmy hippo breeding record in the UK.

But if I were talking about just nile hippos, than I would actually place Longleat's as the best. They have half a mile of lake to swim in, a mud wallow and a huge paddock with glorious privacy, leading to a semi-wild lifestyle.

I would say longleat was the best too, however I didn't think that (other than the size) Marwell's had anything special - if it had an outdoor pool I would rate it higher.

When it comes to Marwell, I was using the terms of animal behaviour: To the visitor it looks like an ordinary hoofstock paddock, but the hippos live such a good lifestyle there, they've never shown signs of stress and they breed well, something other zoos with smaller concrete/woodchip more typical pygmy enclosures find hard to do. And the hippos would probably prefer the heated indoor pools they can use all year round to an outdoor one which can get a bit chilly in winter.

MD, from what i've seen of Marwell's pygmy hippo paddock it doesn't have much in the way of trees. Is this the case? Surely a lack of tree (or overhead) cover should count against an exhibit for a forest dwelling species?

Marwell's enclosure is nice, and I like the indoor pool - but it would have been nice to have a larger one outside. Also, as CZjimmy remarks, it is not exactly reminiscent of a rainforest (although the animals do seem to appreciate the paddock).