100 Year-old Tortoise acts as Mom to Baby Hippo

A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa , officials said The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean, then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.

It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park , told AFP.

After it was swept away and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately , it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added. "The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it followed its mother. somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother," Kahumbu added.

The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years," he explained.

online florist
AL 
AK 
AZ 
AR 
CA 
CO 
CT 
DC 
DE 
FL 
GA 
HI 
IL 
ID 
IN 
IA 
KA 
KY 
LA 
MA 
MD 
MA 
MI 
MN 
MS 
MO 
MT 
NE 
NH 
NJ 
NV 
NM 
NY 
NC 
ND 
OH 
OK 
OR 
PA 
RI 
SC 
SD 
TN 
TX 
UT 
VT 
VA 
WA 
WV 
WI 
WY