One of Riverbanks Zoo's Original Animals Has Died

Riverbanks hippo dies (Added: July 17, 2008)

Montgomery the hippo, who had been at Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia since it opened in 1974, had to be euthanized. (more)

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One of Riverbanks Zoo's Original Animals Has Died

Montgomery the hippo had been at the zoo since it opened in 1974. He had to be euthanized Tuesday because of several ongoing ailments that were not responding to treatments.

By: Robert Kittle | News Channel 7
Published: July 17, 2008

One of Riverbanks Zoo’s three remaining original animals has died. Montgomery the hippo had been at the zoo since it opened in 1974. He had to be euthanized Tuesday because of several ongoing ailments that were not responding to treatments. Curator of Mammals John Davis says Monty was definitely one of the favorites of the keepers. While hippos can be extremely dangerous in the wild and zoo staff always treated him with the caution necessary, Davis says Monty was known as “being a real calm and easygoing hippo.”

He was also a favorite with visitors who marveled at his size, which was large even for a hippo. Monty was ten feet long and five feet high, and the zoo could only estimate his weight at about 4,200 pounds.

He stayed submerged most of the time, but seeing him come out of the water was always a treat, Davis says. "He would come out, come up the ramp and, you know, the hippo would start, you'd start seeing him and you'd just see more and more and more and you wouldn't quite know when it was going to end because it just seemed like a never-ending trail of hippo emerging from the water."

The zoo will not be getting another hippo to replace Montgomery, but will find some other semi-aquatic mammal to live in the exhibit.

The two remaining animals that have been at the zoo from the beginning are a pink flamingo and a white-faced saki monkey.

But while the zoo is mourning the loss of Monty, it’s celebrating the life of another lion cub. Four cubs born June 7 were already on display. A fifth cub was born to another lion June 13 and its mother was rearing him, so he was not on public display. But the mother stopped feeding the cub, and vets discovered she had a ruptured uterus and an infection. They had to perform emergency surgery and vets were afraid the mother lion wouldn’t survive. But she did, and is now back in her enclosure for public viewing. Because of her surgery, her cub is now being hand-reared like the other four cubs, and all five are on public display together.

For photos of Monty and the five lion cubs, go online to our Snap! site, here.