Hippo begins happy life in SA
2007-08-31 20:55
Johannesburg - A hippopotamus who suffered from neglect in a French circus arrived on Friday in a South African wildlife reserve after a flight that lasted over 10 hours, the director of the facility said.
Tonga, 11, which weighed two tonnes, will start a new life in the Sanwild reserve.
"The flight was approximately 10 hours. He arrived about 09:00 and he is doing very well," Louise Joubert told AFP.
"He was fed during the flight. He was sleeping in the flight but he anticipated all the excitement and he was full of life when he arrived," she added.
He was temporarily placed behind an electric enclosure, shielding it away from other animals because he did not yet know how to find food for itself, she said.
Tonga should be totally free in the 21-hectare reserve in a couple of weeks.
The French Animal Aid Foundation won a court order in February to have the male hippo removed from the circus along with five lions, a tiger and five snakes.
The circus failed to provide proper veterinary care to the animals, which in the case of Tonga led to dental problems.
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation offered to pick up the cost of Tonga's transfer by truck to Amsterdam, where it was loaded late Thursday on to a cargo plane for Johannesburg.
"If it had been a wild hippo it would have been quite stressful, but as he is quite familiar with travelling, he was okay during the journey," Joubert said.
On arrival in Johannesburg, it passed through customs formalities before embarking on a 400km journey to the reserve.