Latvians get hip to their hippo's secret after 22 years: he's a she

Jan 4, 2011, 15:57 GMT

Riga - It turns out there's a very good reason why Latvian zoo officials haven't been able to get any offspring out of their pair of hippopotamuses for the last 22 years.

Their him was a her.

Officials at Riga Zoo in Latvia confirmed a long-held suspicion Tuesday when they announced that a male hippopotamus they had been hoping to mate for the last 22 years was in fact female, the Baltic News Service reported.

The hippo named Funtiks was given to the zoo in 1990 by the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Despite repeated attempts to interest 'him' in the attractions of the zoo's resident female Augustine, Funtiks had never managed to muster the necessary enthusiasm to produce the pitter-patter of little hippo feet.

Zoo workers had always harboured suspicions that Funtiks may not have been all that he seemed, said Riga zoo spokeswoman Laura Lidaka. Determining a hippo's sex is notoriously difficult.

With the help of German experts, it had finally been established that the he-hippo was in fact a she-hippo.

As a result of the discovery, made with the help of German experts, Funtiks has belatedly been renamed Funta.

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