The Beifuss File: The long and the short of Memphis Zoo babies
Unlike the animals in a zoo cartoon, the two babies will never meet face to face. But if they did, the contrast would be striking and comical.
Together, they’d be the Laurel and Hardy of zoo babies.
One is skinny and skittish; the other is round and gregarious.
Their antics cause audiences to smile, but there is remarkable grace in their movements, and genius in their design.
Winnie, the Nile hippopotamus, who resembles a tightly packed sausage on the hoof, was born early on the morning of March 23 at the Memphis Zoo. She is the newest homegrown resident of the zoo's $22.4 million Zambezi River Hippo Camp, which opened more or less a year ago this week.
As is the custom with hippos, Winnie was born underwater. She weighed about 76 pounds and has doubled her size since then, but she has a long way to go: Mother tips the scale — the one hidden beneath the prop rock near the entrance to her den — at 3,600 pounds.
Meanwhile, Bogey, the reticulated giraffe, was born at about noon April 3, on exhibit. This means that Bogey had a very public birth, as demonstrated by numerous online cellphone photographs and videos captured by the zoo visitors who witnessed the blessed if messy event.
Bogey is already close to 6 feet tall, but on a recent morning his legs were pleated beneath him like an engineer's folding yardstick as he sucked on a liter-sized baby bottle filled with goat's milk and Pedialyte, a manufactured electrolyte and rehydration formula. The bottle was held by Jason Bankston, one of the zookeepers in charge of the six-times-a-day feedings that have been necessary since Bogey's mother, Akili, failed to exhibit what keepers call "maternal behavior" after her first experience as a parent.
Hippos and giraffes are marquee animals for zoos. Everybody recognizes them and expects to see them, so it's remarkable that the celebrity tandem of Winnie and Bogey arrived almost back to winsome back.
Cuddlesome and active, a healthy swimmer and the walking definition of the term "baby fat," Winnie already is a star attraction, her celebrated debut helping the Memphis Zoo reach what officials anticipate will be a record 1.3 million visitors for the 2016-17 fiscal year. "Everybody loves a baby hippo," said zoo marketing manager Laura Doty, who said the name Winnie was the winner in an online name-the-hippo contest that attracted some 23,000 votes.
Bogey, however, won't be reintroduced to the public until he's a little older and hardier. Because he is not receiving colostrum, the protein-thick and antibody-rich form of milk produced during late pregnancy by most mammals, he currently is susceptible to infection, so visitors must wrap their shoes with hospital-style disposable covers.
The public is missing out. Bogey is a beauty. His lashes look as long as his legs; his big eyes suggest innocence, but his crooked smile appears almost skeptically wry. It's a humanlike expression that reminds zoo employees the giraffe was named for Steve Bogardy, 50, a longtime zookeeper who died the day Bogey was born after a struggle with ALS.
Though giraffes are hardly a novelty at the Memphis Zoo, not one of the majestic African mammals — the tallest creatures on earth — was born at the zoo from 1986 to 2006. Since then, however, a new giraffe baby has arrived every year. Most of these are shared with other zoos, in an attempt to increase the numbers of a once common species that is facing what assistant curator Amanda Schweighart calls a "silent extinction," due not just to habitat loss and poaching but to injuries caused by fences and power lines. (Reaching heights of 20 feet and with necks that can be six feet long, giraffes are vulnerable to obstructions both in the air and close to the ground.)
Memphis hippo history is different. The zoo — always as much a nursery as a tourist attraction — once billed itself as the "Hippo Capital of the World," thanks to the mating enthusiasm of first hippos Venus and Adonis, who arrived in 1914 and produced 16 calves. Winnie's attentive mother is Binti, and baby emulates mom like a shadow. "This is as cute as it can get," said Zambezi curator Farshid Mehrdadfar, who doesn't let his zoological responsibilities diminish his enthusiasm for adorableness. "She does the same as mom does, except in miniature."
"Hippopotamus" comes from the ancient Greek words for "river horse," and an unusual feature of the species is that baby hippos nurse underwater. "So you have to hold your breath while sucking the teat," Mehrdadfar said. This behavior could be seen on a recent zoo visit when Binti reclined on an underwater slope of the pool in her habitat, close enough to the surface so she could lift her head and let her nostrils access air when necessary. Meanwhile, little Winnie floated underwater, sucking milk from Binti's udder, then pushing herself to the surface after a minute or so for a gulp of air — and back again, over and over.
Like their African neighbors the giraffes, hippos are classified as "vulnerable" to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a United Nations-affiliated organization of scientists and researchers. "Vulnerable" is less alarming than "endangered" or "critically endangered" on IUCN's "Red List" (an inventory that assesses the global survival chances of Earth species), but the ranking is hardly comforting to those who love animals, including the Memphis Zoo keepers and curators whose coordinated efforts under the Species Survival Plan of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums represent an attempt to ensure the continuity of threatened species.
Mehrdadfar said that Winnie's birth is representative of "the pinnacle peak" of the whole zoo experience. "It feels like we definitely contributed to something much bigger than just a local community," he said. "We contributed something to the well-being of the species as a whole."
