Kenya’s Twist on the Odd Couple

For a panic-stricken baby hippo, lost and far from home, the sight of an old, wrinkly, rotund male tortoise must have suggested something very different: Are you my mother?

Owen the hippo sought refuge behind the tortoise shortly after Christmas, and weeks later here they are together, safe and warm on a lazy afternoon. Owen looks like a character in a children’s book, his eyes closed blissfully as he snuggles down in a mud puddle near a reptile 130 years his senior. He pricks up his Shrek-like ears at the slightest sound, opens his eyes, then dozes off again.

In the wild, hippos are sociable creatures who live in close-knit groups. But this bonding of mammal and reptile has surprised wildlife experts.

Still, there is no accounting for love.

The details of Owen’s adventure are not entirely clear, but it seems to have begun when a group of hippos was swept from the river where they lived and into the open sea, perhaps because of heavy December rains.

The hippos are believed to have made their way back home despite heavy seas caused by the earthquake and tsunami that hit the opposite side of the Indian Ocean near Indonesia on Dec. 26. But Owen somehow got separated from the group.

Alone, he spent several days wallowing helplessly in the saltwater before the Kenyan wildlife service and fishermen wrapped him in a fishing net, tied him up and put him in a truck to be taken away.

The capture and the noisy crowd that watched must have unnerved Owen. When he was set loose in Haller Wildlife Park outside Mombasa in an enclosure with two giant tortoises and some bushbucks, he bolted to the giant tortoise named Mzee, or Old Man, and hid.

“When he arrived, he was completely exhausted and stressed. He got up and started staggering around a bit and then he went straight for the tortoise. We never expected something like this,” said Sabine Baer, rehabilitation and ecosystems manager at Lafarge Eco Systems, which runs the park.

“After all that being chased around by humans and all the noise and hassle, he must have been looking for protection.

“A mammal with a mammal, yes it happens. But reptiles and mammals, we haven’t seen this,” she said. “We were all quite amazed to see how fast it happened.”

Owen, thought to be about a year old, was only partially weaned and was consuming milk and grass when he was separated from his mother. In the wild, hippo calves stay with their mothers for about 18 months, or until the next calf is born. Then they join a group of older calves.

Hippos often lie around in groups and rest their heads on one another.

Now Owen likes to rest his head on the giant tortoise instead. He licks Mzee, and has even been seen to gently put his mouth around the tortoise’s head in what Baer says looks like a form of play. He spends most of the day in the mud pond with Mzee. Sometimes he calls out to the two tortoises in the compound.

“He walks behind the tortoise. He goes to sleep next to the tortoise,” Baer said. “When he wants to go into the water, he nudges the tortoise and licks it as if to say, ‘Come on, let’s go into the water,’ walks off a little bit and then looks around and comes back to see if the tortoise understands.

“And when you go too close to the tortoise, he chases you away and defends it as his mother,” she said.

In captivity, hippos can live to be about 60. At 265 pounds, Owen is already capable of inflicting significant damage, but he can’t go back to a group of wild hippos. The males are very territorial and would kill him, Baer said.

He almost certainly would have died -- from dehydration, exposure and hunger -- had he remained in the sea, said Dr. Zahoor Kashmiri, a Kenyan wildlife veterinarian who attended the calf after his capture. “Hippos are freshwater animals and their whole physiology is adapted to fresh water,” he said.

As it was, the staff worried about Owen when he got to Haller Wildlife Park, a converted quarry. He refused to eat for the first two days.

“He was quite thin when he came. He was this dull, dark color,” Baer said.

The connection to Mzee helped Owen adjust. Watching the two tortoises eat, the calf realized that the strange, dry brown stuff was edible, even though it was very different from what he was used to.

“Now he’s nice and round. You can see the change in color. He’s more of a brown-pink color, you know, hippo color,” Baer said.

Although Owen is clearly attached to the tortoise, it’s difficult to tell how much of the affection is reciprocated. Mzee at least tolerates the hippo and does seek out attention from people.

Not only does Mzee, one of an Indian Ocean breed that can live as long as 200 years and is related to Galapagos Island tortoises, cuddle next to the warm-blooded hippo calf, but when the tortoise sees Baer enter the enclosure, he strides up rapidly. Like a contented canine, he nudges her legs, waits for her to scratch the hide of his neck and pick off any ticks. He’ll take as much attention as she has time to dish out.

But the time comes for all young hippos to leave their mothers -- real or imagined.

Park staff members are planning to separate him from the tortoise. At some point, they will move him in with a lonely 12-year-old female named Cleo and hope the two will breed.

Owen probably will have to be lured into a crate and hoisted by crane into his new enclosure. At first, Mzee and the other tortoise will be moved with him, but the hope is that soon he’ll forget his maternal figure.

“Then we hope that he will focus on Cleo,” Baer said.