Milwaukee County Zoo’s hippo hits beach, new pool
Happy can now be seen in underwater area
It was a warm sunny day, so what better time to hit the beach?
Evidently that’s what Happy the hippo figured, because the Milwaukee County Zoo’s 39-year-old male spent much of the day cooling off in his new pool last week.
That was not all that surprising, since hippopotamuses are known to spend around 16 hours each day in the water. What was different were the zoo visitors watching Happy up close as he luxuriated in his private watering hole.
Kids and photo-snapping parents stood a few inches away from Happy, separated by glass in the zoo’s recently-opened Dohmen Family Foundation Hippo Haven.
With two large front teeth looking as if he had just chomped down on lemon Popsicles, Happy watched the humans watching him, occasionally sticking his nostrils above the water surface to snort some air. Sometimes he closed his bulbous eyes underwater, but more often he gazed with interest at the transfixed zoo-goers.
The Milwaukee County Zoo’s hippos have always had a swimming pool, but it was much smaller and difficult for visitors to see them — except for an occasional glimpse of a head or rump as they moved around.
The new hippo exhibit features a 60,000-gallon underwater viewing tank with a sophisticated water filtration system and a 3,500-square-foot beach area for the semi-aquatic mammals to catch rays and relax. The viewing platform features 85 feet of 3-inch thick windows.
Milwaukee is now one of only a dozen zoos in the United States to offer underwater hippo viewing. The new pool features two entrances and depths of up to 7 feet, with rocks and logs for Happy to push off from.
Happy, who arrived in Milwaukee in 2009 from the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., took to the new pool like a duck to water.
Or, well, a hippo to a watering hole.
“When he got in the pool for the first time, he didn’t want to come out,” said Zoo Director Chuck Wikenhauser.
The response from Milwaukee’s other hippo, 50-year-old Patti? An emphatic no. Apparently the geriatric Patti made it known to zookeepers that she wants to stay in the indoor exhibit area, thank you very much. In effect, Patti told Happy he can have the new place all to himself.
Patti has outlived the average zoodwelling hippo by 13 years. She and Happy tolerate each other, but are not best buds, Wikenhauser said.
A 13.5 million dollar project
Construction began in spring 2019 for the $13.5 million hippo exhibit. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, workers were able to finish the exhibit on time while wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
Normally the hippo exhibit would have had a grand opening, comparable to the party when the elephants moved into their new area last year. But with the zoo closed for several months and a reopening in June limiting the number of visitors and areas open to visitors due to COVID-19, the hippos’ new digs quietly opened, and folks have found their way to the spot, which is in the same location as the previous exhibit.
“We really wanted to open this on June 13 when the zoo reopened, but with a limited number of people we couldn’t have a ribbon-cutting,” Wikenhauser said.
Funding came from Milwaukee County and donations through the Zoological Society of Milwaukee.
The previous outdoor pool was about six times smaller and zookeepers had to empty it each day because hippos use their pools as toilets.
The new outdoor pool uses the same ozone filtration process installed in the zoo’s otter habitat, filtering and reusing the water during the outdoor season for hippos, which runs from April to October. Since the pool won’t need to be drained at the end of each day, Wikenhauser said the zoo will save around 20 million gallons of water each year.
The three-step filtering process separates hippo poop, presses out the liquid and forms solid cakes that sort of look like cow pies. They are then composted into nutrient-rich organic soil through the zoo’s partnership with Blue Ribbon Organics in Caledonia, and sold as fertilizer. That means Milwaukee hippo dung could soon be spread in local gardens.
Hippo Haven features two sculptures of hippos that kids can crawl on, informational signs, an actual hippopotamus skull and a splatter zone that simulates a hippo spraying poop. Some of the educational areas are closed until the zoo reaches later phases of reopening.
When the zoo reopened in June, all indoor areas were closed, but that changed last weekend. The zoo is still limiting the number of visitors to 6,000 per day, but now the aviary, aquatic and reptile center, dairy barn, Apes of Africa, elephant care center and kids’ playground have reopened.
“That helps significantly because a lot of people told us on social media they weren’t coming out until everything is open,” Wikenhauser said.
The small mammals, big cats and primates areas will remain closed.