Our hippopotamus named Tücsök is one of the oldest residents of our Zoo, and she has just turned 52. This elderly female hippo has become something of a matriarch over the years, with seven calves, ten grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren.
April 27 is a special day at the Zoo—it’s Tücsök’s birthday. This year, she turned exactly 52. Her keepers marked the occasion with a small celebration for the hippo, who remains in good health.
While Tücsök is not a world record holder in terms of age, 52 is still a remarkable number for a hippo. Among the animals currently living at our Zoo—aside from a very old alligator—Tücsök is the oldest. She was born right here in Budapest, not transferred from another zoo. She’s also notable for being a mother seven times over, a grandmother ten times, a great-grandmother eleven times, and a great-great-grandmother seven times. Her descendants can be found in cities like Debrecen and Pécs, as well as in the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Spain, and even in the United States.
In the case of hippos, 52 years is quite impressive. In the wild, most hippos don’t live past 40, and reaching 50 is exceptionally rare. In zoos, however, where animals face fewer challenges than in the wild, lifespans are typically longer. Hippos are no exception—zoo-born individuals tend to outlive their wild counterparts. Even so, only a few zoo hippos reach or surpass the 50-year mark. True old age in hippos is generally considered to begin around 58 to 60 years. The longest-lived hippo on record was a female named Bertha, who reached 65 years at the Manila Zoo.
Tücsök is still some way off from that, but 52 is still noteworthy. We can say this with confidence, as we have ample comparison here in Budapest. Over the past 130 years, around 50 hippos have lived at the Zoo. Some of them reached impressive ages, like Tücsök’s mother Momba, who passed away at 40, or our hippo named Kincsem, who lived to be 46. But for the past six years, Tücsök has held the record as Budapest’s oldest hippo.
Even when compared to other Zoo residents, Tücsök’s age is outstanding—though comparing lifespans across species is never straightforward. It’s not just the number of years that counts, but also the typical lifespan of the species. One of our previous mhorr gazelles, Evita, lived to be 19 and a half—setting a world record for her species. For a hippo, however, that age would be unremarkable. In fact, even Tücsök’s youngest calf, Jusztina—who still lives with her mother at our Zoo—is older than that, at 31. Still, if we go by absolute age, and exclude our ancient alligator, Tücsök is the oldest living animal at the Zoo—and the oldest mammal as well. Next in line is our gorilla Liesel, born in 1977.
It’s far more common to find elderly or even extremely old animals in zoos than in the wild, where few live to such advanced ages. At our Zoo, thanks to long-term care, many animals have lived unusually long lives.
We’ve been keeping hippos at the Budapest Zoo since 1893, when a male named Jónás arrived—our very first of the species. At the time, there were far fewer zoos in the world, and only a handful had hippos. While places like London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna got hippos slightly earlier than we did, they also had periods with none at all. In contrast, since Jónás arrived, we’ve always had at least one or two hippos here. That means we’ve been keeping hippos continuously for 130 years—something no other zoo in the world can claim.
Since World War I, baby hippos have been regularly born here. Many went on to live in other zoos, while some stayed and had their own offspring. Over time, a true hippo dynasty has emerged in Budapest.
Tücsök, now 52, was also born in Budapest, though her lineage cannot be traced back to the hippos of the 1910s. Her parents were brought from Africa on July 7, 1958, to introduce new breeding stock to our herd. Her mother was named Mombassa—nicknamed Momba—and her father was Nairobi, often called Robi by the keepers. Together, Momba and Nairobi had thirteen calves. Nairobi also sired five additional calves with an older female, Kincsem, who was born in Budapest in 1931 and survived the war. After Nairobi’s death in 1979, Momba gave birth to three more calves, fathered by a male who arrived in 1985.
Tücsök was born in 1973 and originally named Borbála in the official Zoo registry. Tücsök was just a nickname, but it became so common that we eventually updated the registry and made it her official name.
Many still remember the tragic event in which one of our hippos died after swallowing a ball someone had thrown into its mouth. While many refer to it as a tennis ball, it was actually a solid rubber ball. The object was later displayed for years in a glass case near the hippo pool, along with photos from the post-mortem examination, as a cautionary example.
The tragedy happened on August 6, 1994, leaving Tücsök widowed. At the time, Tücsök and Süsü made up our breeding pair, and their final calf was Jusztina, who still lives with her mother at the Budapest Zoo. Born on September 26, 1994—on the name day of Jusztina—she never got to meet her father.
Before becoming a widow, Tücsök was a successful and prolific mother. While she didn’t quite match the number of calves her own mother had, she still gave birth to seven offspring. Five of them are still alive today: Siegfried (born in 1978) and Linda (born in 1986) live at the Debrecen Zoo; Alie (also called Mara), born in 1989, lives in Amnéville, France; and Jusztina, as mentioned, remains here in Budapest.
But that’s not the end of the story—Tücsök now has ten grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren. In 2023, as we prepared to celebrate her 50th birthday, one of our dedicated colleagues, Árpád Kövér, collected detailed information on Tücsök’s descendants. He even tried to gather photos of as many as possible to display them on an informational board, which was set up next to the hippo pool for her milestone birthday.
