Rumba's young is the 12th hippo to be born in captivity over the last 12 months globally. According to the zoo keepers, the labour was swift, and both the mother and the young are feeling fine now. The young, which spent her first 36 hours in the water, is now taking her first clumsy steps on the ground under the watchful eye of her mother. The young, which now weighs 30 kilos, is expected to reach 2 tonnes when she becomes an adult. From afar the father Valecek (his name domesticated into Wałeczek, which means something like "muffin top" in Polish) is proudly looking at his first baby.
The young hippo is yet to have a name, but it very likely to have something to do with dance, just like her mother Rumba, her grandmother Samba and her sister Salsa. Rumba was first seen to have a walk with the young in the pen on Tuesday. In Poland, hippos can be seen in Wroclaw, Warsaw, Gdańsk and Chorzów.
According to data collected by the Zoological Information Management System, hippos are kept in 149 out of 1000 zoos and aquaria worldwide.
