Hippo sculpture’s stay on London’s Thames is extended

The same artist who created the mondo rubber duck for the Port of Los Angeles in August has a similarly scaled-up hippo bobbing in London’s Thames River.

Angelenos turned out in droves to see Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s six-story Rubber Duck that bobbed around L.A.’s port during the L.A. Tall Ships Festival in August. So many people attended that the duck’s stay was extended.

And as it turns out, London’s hippo will be sticking around a bit as well.

HippopoThames, as the sculpture is known, measures 72 feet long and 29 feet high. It’s made of plywood, steel beams as well as bits of larch and other wood. This hippo with popping eyes and a rudder-like tail was created by Hofman as a commission piece for the Thames Festival Trust and Nine Elms on the South Bank.

The sculpture recently spent 28 days near the Battersea Power Station on the Thames and has been extended another 28 days at the riverside St Katharine Docks near the Tower of London.

To get there, the hippo took a little barge-towed ride past the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye and Tower Bridge.

Hippopo has lots of Twitter and Instagram fans (#HippopoThames) who have been posting photographs and messages. The sculpture makes a connection to the city’s ancient past too.

“Hippos once roamed freely across ancient Britain, and now they’ve returned to London after 125,000 years as a giant hippo sculpture is erected on the Thames,” London’s Natural History Museum says on its website. Pop into the free museum to see a skeleton of one.

No word on where Hippopo will be floating around after its London tour ends.