This charming little baby is called Bernadina.
Bernadina is a pygmy hippo
and her birth is fantastic news as pygmy hippo numbers are very low, with under 3000 remaining in the
wild. But thanks to the hard work of conservationists in Western Africa and here at Buin Zoo in Chile,
we get our chance to see this adorable baby pygmy hippo.
I'm Jaida Elcock, and this is your First Chance to See.
We'll be meeting veterinarian Vicente Vergara in just a minute to find out more about his new friend, Bernadina.
But first, here's everything you need to know about the pygmy hippo.
Now, from looking at them, you might think that the pygmy hippo is just a smaller version of their cousins.
The common hippopotamus.
However, although they are related, they live in two different parts of Africa, and size is not the only thing that sets these two hippos
apart. Pygmy hippos have a more rounded head with their eyes set on the side rather than in front.
And pygmy hippos also have sharp toenails, whereas their cousins have webbed feet.
Common hippos can weigh ten times as much as pygmy hippos, but that doesn't mean that pygmy hippos are small.
They can still top the scales at a hefty quarter of a tonne or more.
That's about the same as a baby grand piano.
Now, pygmy hippos live in the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in Western Africa.
Found in forests and inland wetlands.
These hefty animals are surprisingly secretive.
They're also nocturnal, and they don't hang out in groups.
Mostly, they just like to be on their own.
I respect it. While they may be big, they're hairless and have greenish black skin, which helps them camouflage surprisingly well in
the forest. Oh, is that one there?
Oh, no, that's just a tree.
Pygmy hippos can feed for a staggering 6 hours every night.
Me too. Gorging on everything from grasses, fruits, ferns and tender roots.
Now, you might want to hold your nose for this one.
They mark their trails in the jungle by cooing and wagging their tail to spread it all around.
Then they can follow their own smell to find their way around.
Sadly, due to hunting and deforestation, pygmy hippo numbers are decreasing in the wild.
What forest remains is not joined together.
So pygmy hippos are becoming more and more isolated from each other.
That's why Bernadina's birth is so important.
All is not lost.
Hi, Vicente. So who's up behind you?
Right now we are in the African zone in the domains of the pygmy hippo.
So right behind me is Bernadina, her mother, Coca, and her father, Hipolito.
So how long was Bernadina's mother pregnant for?
She had a pregnancy of about 211 days, to be specific.
Pygmy hippos have a pregnancy of about 6 to 7 months.
How did her birth happen?
This is the first calf of Coca's and this is the birth that happened during the day.
This is the first time that we were able to record the whole birth and monitor her.
Also, Bernadina was born during the day.
That's different from all of her siblings.
She's the fourth calf of Coca's.
She was born a little wet blob with open eyes.
She was just like not bigger than a microwave.
And she was weighing about seven kilograms.
That's about 15 pounds.
That's a pretty normal average kind of size for them, now she's a very healthy and beautiful girl.
How is she doing and what's she like?
Do hippos have personalities?
Right now, she's doing fantastic.
So she's showing her true colors now.
For the past six months, she's starting to be a little bit more independent.
Before that, she was just mom's shadow at all times.
Right now, she's showing her interests.
She likes to roam around, she's very curious,
trying to put everything in her mouth and have some dives in her pool, where she will play with mom and
dad. Right now, she's very affectionate with them, but also she's starting to show her boundaries.
How does captive breeding help pygmy hippo populations in the wild?
Pygmy hippos are very endangered.
They're supposed to be about 2500 of them in the wild.
They come from West Africa, in a very isolated part.
They live in dense forests and wetlands.
They are not doing great in the wild.
So for the past couple of decades,
there have been an international effort to try to make a stronger population ex-situ
. So, trying to reinforce the numbers with good genetics,
so whenever we are able to address the issues that are happening in West Africa,
we're going to have enough of a population with good genetics so we can try to provide back.
This programme has been going on for more than 30 years,
and just between the seventies and the nineties, the number of captive pygmy hippos has more than
doubled.
What does it mean to you to watch her grow every day?
I guess it's just like watching a kid growing up,not everything blows your mind,
but every single day you're finding something a little bit different about her, trying to find what she likes, and she doesn't
like that much.
So maybe it will be a food that that day she's discovering for the first time,
or maybe it's a food that she had like 1000 times, and that day she was just over it.
And it's just those little things of just watching her becoming more of a teenager if you will.
What is your favorite thing about the pygmy hippo?
I'm quite biased around pygmy hippos.
I think they're just cutest and just rounder versions of their big siblings.
The one thing that I find just amazing about them is that they provide their own
skincare product,
and this is like a pink, oily fluid that they ooze from their skin.
It's called blood sweat, it's not a very cute name.
It's supposed to help them with dehydration and also bacterial infection.
And what's next for Bernadina?
Right now, she's a teenager living with mom and dad.
We hope that she will soon go to another institution where hopefully she will find a mate.
Also help the whole population, bringing us a beautiful calf.
As I mentioned, she's showing her boundaries and that's absolutely normal for them.
This actual family group is quite unusual.
Hipolito and Coca have been together for many years so they get along reasonably well.
Just like an old marriage.
But Bernadina at some point, will want to be a little bit farther away from them.
How adorable is Bernadina and what fantastic work by Vicente and everyone over at the zoo.
We can't wait to see her grow up and carry on the pygmy hippo legacy.
You know, they say the best things come in small packages, perhaps pygmy hippo size packages.
Thanks for joining me on First Chance To See.
Let's take another look at that fantastic little hippo.