Thursday, June 19, 2008

Berlins Hippo facility built in 1997 seems to be an inspiration for the Copenhagen elephant house, but seems more appropriate as a hippo exhibit.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

For an animal that has quite a reach distance both physically and by thowing items, this seems all too true with an all glass ceiling.

Anonymous said...

Ever heard of feral hippos? I hadn't either, but check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UHFHT1WhPc

Ian

Wade G. Burck said...

Ryan,
That's why Architects are paid the big bucks. They wisely put "leaf stickers" up there so the goofy elephants would be fooled by the dappling affect on the floor and think they were in the jungle and not throw the ankus somebody left hanging on the cable through the glass.
Wade

Anonymous said...

Oh I see. I was under the impression they were to make less noticable the shit thrown up there. Very valid point Wade. lol.

Wade G. Burck said...

Ian,
Hippo's are as tough as latigo leather. I think a lot off attacks/injuries in zoo's that have been attributed to elephants were actually hippo's. It's just that nobody wants to admit they got "downed and browned" by a big fat river horse.
Wade

Anonymous said...

Ian-
Fascinating story. Thank you for sharing that.

Wade G. Burck said...

Ian,
One of the most famous families in Mexican circus sold or "donated" most of the animals to Pablo Escobar for his "zoo." One night sitting in a Guadalajara pub one of them started regaling me with stories of some of the things they did with the animals. It made me so angry, I threw my Corona at him, shoved the table into his chest, and knocked him out of the chair. It cost me 150.00 in cab fare to go back to Tepic, but it was for the best. Swear I'll kill that clown if I ever see him again.
Wade

Anonymous said...

Wade, I was born in Tanzania (then Tanganyika). My father was a mining engineer and used to travel a distance through the bush to get to work. He used to bring home young animals he found, so we had at different times wild dogs, baby buck, baby warthogs, and always had Vervet monkeys that had been abandoned by British workers who had got them as pets and then returned to England. The most unusual was a baby hippo (that was ultimately killed by a dog). Some of the animals had been caught in bush fires. Although I guess their hearts were in the right place, they knew nothing about the needs of baby wild animals so they never lasted long. I think the monkeys were all released eventually. For some reason the accepted way of keeping monkeys was chaining them to a high post with a little house on top. Us kids were terrified of them.
Of all the animals, the little hippo was the coolest.
Probably the reason why I ever became interested in animals in the first place was my parents misguided attempts at zoo keeping. I wish I had all their old photos.

Ian

Anonymous said...

now Wade not fair to start a story and not end it . so what did this clown said that rang you up that cause you to threw your ice cold corona at him . ?CuriosRaul

Wade G. Burck said...

Ian,
How long did you live in Africa? I assume you witnessed a number of social changes.
Wade

Wade G. Burck said...

Raul,
There were a number of things, but the one that stands out is that they made tamales using goat meat. LOL

Anonymous said...

Wade, after Tanzania, we moved to Uganda, then after independance from Britain it became too dangerous to live there so we moved to Sout Africa. We moved to the US when I was 12.

Ian