Check this out.....I wonder what it looks like when he pricks up his ears? Think the writer could have chosen a better word? <g>
story.news.yahoo.com
Reptile draws scared hippo out of his shell
Thu Feb 24, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Robyn Dixon Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
For a panic-stricken baby hippo, lost and far from home, the sight of a wrinkly, rotund old male tortoise must have suggested something different: Are you my mother?
Owen the hippo sought refuge behind the tortoise one day just after Christmas, and weeks later here they are together, safe and warm on a lazy afternoon. Owen looks like a character in a children's book, his eyes closed as he snuggles in a mud puddle near a reptile 130 years his senior. He pricks up his Shrek-like ears at the slightest sound, opens his eyes and then dozes off again.
In the wild, hippos are sociable creatures who live in close-knit groups. But this bonding of mammal and reptile has surprised the experts.
The details of Owen's adventure are not entirely clear, but it seems to have begun when a group of hippos were swept from the river where they lived and into the sea, perhaps because of heavy December rains.
The hippos are thought to have made their way back home despite heavy seas caused by the earthquake and tsunami that hit the opposite side of the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26. But Owen somehow got separated.
Alone, he spent several days wallowing helplessly in the salt water before the Kenya Wildlife Service and local fishermen wrapped him in a fishing net, tied him up and put him in a truck to be taken away.
When he was set loose in Haller Park outside Mombasa in an enclosure with two giant tortoises and some bushbucks, he bolted to the tortoise named Mzee, or Old Man, and hid.
"When he arrived, he was completely exhausted and stressed. He got up and started staggering around a bit and then he went straight for the tortoise. We never expected something like this," said Sabine Baer, rehabilitation and ecosystems manager at Lafarge Eco Systems, which runs the wildlife park. "After all that being chased around by humans and all the noise and hassle, he must have been looking for protection.
"A mammal with a mammal, yes it happens. But reptiles and mammals, we haven't seen this," she said. "We were all quite amazed to see how fast it happened."
Separated not long after birth
Owen, thought to be about a year old, was partly weaned and living on milk and grass when he was separated from his mother. In the wild, hippo calves stay with their mothers until about 18 months of age, or until the next calf is born. Then they join a group of older calves.
Hippos often lie around in groups and rest their heads on one another.
Owen likes to rest his head on the giant tortoise. He licks Mzee and puts his mouth gently around the tortoise's head in what Baer said looks like a form of play. He spends most of the day with the tortoise.
"He walks behind the tortoise. He goes to sleep next to the tortoise," Baer said. "When he wants to go into the water, he nudges the tortoise and licks it as if to say, `Come on, let's go into the water,' walks off a little bit and then looks around and comes back to see if the tortoise understands.
"And when you go too close to the tortoise, he chases you away and defends it as his mother."
At 265 pounds, Owen is capable of inflicting significant damage. But he can't go back to a group of wild hippos. The males are very territorial and would kill him, Baer said.
He almost certainly would have died, too--from dehydration, exposure and hunger--had he remained in the sea, said Dr. Zahoor Kashmiri, a Kenyan wildlife veterinarian who attended the calf after his capture. "Hippos are freshwater animals and their whole physiology is adapted to freshwater," he said.
`Now he's nice and round'
As it was, the staff worried about Owen when he got to Haller, a converted quarry. He refused to eat for the first two days.
"He was quite thin when he came. He was this dull dark color," Baer said.
But the connection to Mzee the tortoise helped him adjust. Watching the two tortoises eat, the calf realized that the strange, dry brown stuff they ate was edible, even if it was different from what he was used to.
"Now he's nice and round. You can see the change in color. He's more of a brown-pink color, you know, hippo color," Baer said.
While Owen is clearly attached to the tortoise, it's more difficult to tell how much of the affection is reciprocated. Still, Mzee at least tolerates the hippo and does seek out attention from people.
Not only does Mzee, one of an Indian Ocean breed that can live as long as 200 years and is related to Galapagos Island tortoises, cuddle next to the warm-blooded hippo calf, but when Mzee sees Baer enter the enclosure, he strides up rapidly. Like a contented canine, he nudges her legs, waits for her to scratch the cool, wrinkly hide of his neck and pick off any ticks.
But the time comes for all young hippos to leave their mothers--real or imagined.
Park staff are planning to separate Owen from Mzee. At some point, they will move him in with a lonely 12-year-old female named Cleo and hope that the two will breed.
Owen probably will have to be lured into a crate and hoisted by crane into his new enclosure. At first, Mzee and the other tortoise will be moved with him, but the hope is that soon he'll forget his maternal figure.
"Then we hope that he will focus on Cleo," Baer said. |
