Hippos in USA zoos

The Milwaukee County Zoo will be one of only eight zoos in the United States to feature a view of hippos underwater when the exhibit is done. Does anyone know what other zoos have underwater hippo viewing?

 

I can think of three off the top of my head: San Diego, Cincinnati, and Disney's Animal Kingdom (not sure if the last one counts)

 

Dallas and Fort Worth both do.

 

This is the best I could find for Fort Worth, start at around 40 seconds in: Fort Worth Zoo’s African Savanna Offers New Ways To See Favorite Animals
It only opened last spring. The hippos are only viewable from the underwater area.

Here's Dallas, which opened spring 2017:

The hippos are viewable from the land area (from this photo, behind the bottom left corner), all along the walkway, and then the metal roof in the center covers the underwater area.

 

San Deigo zoo have large windows for under water viewing

 

Does it matter which species?

 

I believe its the common Hippo

 

Saint Louis has underwater hippo viewing.

 

Adventure Aquarium, Toledo and Memphis have underwater viewing.

 

They are surely promoting off of outdated numbers because the number of facilities with underwater viewing for Nile hippos already adds up to more than eight...

Adventure Aquarium
Busch Gardens Tampa
Cincinnati
Dallas
Disney's Animal Kingdom
Ellen Trout
Ft. Worth
Memphis
St. Louis
San Antonio
San Diego
Sedgwick County
Toledo

Even if we exclude those facilities that are not traditional zoos (Adventure Aquarium, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Busch Gardens Tampa), there are still already ten zoos with underwater viewing for Nile hippos.

 

There are at least thirteen zoological facilities just in the United States with underwater viewing for Common Hippos, plus Milwaukee County has plans to have underwater viewing in the future.

San Diego, Saint Louis, Dallas, Fort Worth, Memphis, Toledo, Sedgwick County, Busch Gardens, San Antonio, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Cincinnati, Ellen Trout and Adventure Aquarium.

Plus there are a couple of Canadian zoos (Calgary and Granby) that both showcase Common Hippos in exhibits with underwater viewing.

 

I'm going off of into from the the Milwaukee zoological society website . Thanks for letting me know that's not correct

 

Interesting tidbit on hippos. While they are listed at being exhibited at 30 AZA zoos, there are only 79 hippos listed at AZA zoos (according to the antelope TAG). Unless American zoos move to breed in larger groups-absent imports- hippos may well die out in American zoos,

 

Which is why new there has been a large amount of renovated/new hippo exhibits being built around the US recently. It’s not exactly a new problem and the SSP has known about it for a while. It just takes time and money to build the new exhibits that can house breeding groups.

 

I forget where I read it, but some zoo mentioned ~84 hippos on exhibit throughout the country. Do any non AZA accredited facilities maintain them?

Like with elephants though, zoos that choose to house "common" hippos (a hippo is anything but common!), need to embrace a pod structure and all that entails. Having only one is not nearly sufficient.

 

I think a herd of 10-12 hippos would make a fantastic exhibit. Would love to see Ramat Gan's herd someday. This is an old article but you get the gist

https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/israel-zoo-experiences-hippo-overload-1.12235

 

Forty would be an insane number to house!* But one I would like to see as well.

I think some of our larger zoos could easily handle 10-12 hippos, but I was thinking 5-7 animals would be a reasonable number. I believe the husbandry of hippos is sufficiently advanced to introduce one or two new members to an established pod without major incident.

* - The San Diego Wild Animal could probably house 40 animals in one of those ponds that go unused!

 

What Zoos in the Usa-and Canada-currently keep both species, River and Pygmo Hippo ? I only know San Diego.

 

The only other one I know of is Toronto.

 

Thank you. And that's it ? Its sad that one of the biggest Cities of the World, New York, does not have one of both species in one of their five Zoos...

Wow, we now have 16 zoos in europe with both species. Four of them them in France.

And with what other species San Diego keeps the pygmy hippos together at the moment ? I guess, a species of guenons, maybe duikers ?