Budapest Zoo & Botanical Garden is famous for its Nile hippopotamuses. Famous because of the long and rich tradition of hippo management and husbandry here, and also because of our hippos can bathe in medicinal thermal water.
Our first hippo, the legendary Jónás arrived in 1893. Although some zoos, including the London Zoo, the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, the Berlin Zoo and the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, had hippos before 1893 but there were also periods when hippos were absent. However we have always had at least one hippo since 1893. So our Zoo has been exhibiting this species continuously without any interruptions for more than 131 years. No other zoo can says this about itself.
One of the special features of hippopotamus husbandry in Budapest Zoo is that we can even fill the hippos’ pool with thermal water. Our zoo’s neighbor is the famous Széchenyi Thermal Bath that is supplied with a 1,256-meter-deep thermal well. A pipeline has connected to our Zoo since the 1930s. Both of the outdoor and indoor hippo pools have thermal water supply. However we usually mix the thermal water with tap water because the temperature of crude thermal water exceeds 60 degrees Celsius, that would be too hot for these animals. Of course our hippos really like the pleasantly warm, healing thermal water.
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