Oh Baby. Rhino Orphanage Takes In Abandoned One-Week-Old Hippo

He’s not a rhino. And his mother wasn’t poached. But a one-week-old baby hippo is being taken care of by Thula Thula Rhino Orphanage, after he was abandoned by his pod.

World renowned rhino expert and orphanage consultant, Karen Trendler, reported yesterday that local conservation authorities had referred the “very tiny, very weak” hippo calf to Thula Thula, which usually provides a refuge to rhino calves that have lost their mothers to poachers.

The hippo calf weighs less than 30kg.

According to Trendler, the conservation authorities had monitored the male calf over a 48-hour period before deciding that he definitely needed help. He was captured and admitted to Thula Thula earlier this week.

Trendler said: “Initially very weak and exhausted, he is responding to the intensive nursing and stabilising well.

“Our only concern is that it appears as though he is still urinating through the umbilical cord. We are hoping that this is a developmental issue that will resolve on its own.”

Trendler explained that “when the calf is still in the uterus, urine is cleared from the foetus into the mothers blood stream via the umbilical cord. As birth nears, a tube called the urachis develops enabling urine to pass from bladder out of the body via the uretha.”

She said she has worked with both zebra and rhino with this condition before, and in some cases the situation resolved without the need for intervention and in one case, surgery was successfully carried out.

Updates on the little hippo’s progress will be made on Facebook.

POACHING UPDATE…

Thula Thula Rhino Orphanage is a refuge where wounded and orphaned rhinos from poaching are cared for by a dedicated team with the purpose of rehabilitating the orphans into the wild.

Poaching is an overwhelming problem in South Africa where, according to Thula Thula, approximately one rhino is killed every nine hours.

Rhino horn is currently priced on the black market as $90,000 per kilogram. With an average horn weighing 3 kg, this makes a rhino’s horn more valuable per kilogram than platinum and gold combined!

The demand for rhino horn is driven by a myth in Asian countries like China and Vietnam that the horn has powerful healing properties. In reality it is made of the same substance as fingernails.

To find out how to support Thula Thula and fight poaching – please click here.