Hippo's death hard to foresee, vet says

Bill Scanlon and Hector Gutierrez

Published February 6, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.
Updated February 6, 2008 at 12:53 p.m.

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Photo by The Rocky / 2004

Hazina, left, at age 3, is shown at her exhibit in the Denver Zoo.

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The October death of Denver Zoo hippopotamus Hazina, a day after her nearly 29-hour ride to her new home at the Calgary Zoo in Alberta, Canada, "was an accident that no one could have reasonably foreseen," an independent veterinarian concluded this week.

The 6-year-old river hippo died Oct. 26 about 11 hours after she arrived at the Calgary Zoo, and a necropsy showed she died of heart failure caused by muscle damage from sitting on her legs during the truck trip, according to a Calgary Zoo veterinarian.

Jacques Dancosse, a consulting veterinarian for the International Air Transport Association, or IATA, cited several concerns in his review of the hippo's death. The floor of the crate that housed the hippo during the trip did not show any special non-slip surface as required by IATA guidelines, according to Dancosse's report.

Animals that are being transported use non-slip surfaces to help them stand when they want to, wrote Dancosse, who was asked by the Calgary Zoo to conduct the review. Witnesses, who saw the inside of the container in Denver, Calgary and at the U.S.- Canada border, told investigators that hay or straw that was placed inside the crate was covering only part of the floor. The floor was covered with wood shavings.

Chris Danhauer, who worked for Planned Migration and transported Hazina, said that straw would pile up near the walls of the container during the trip "leaving the wood floor almost bare," according to the review.

Ana Bowie, a spokeswoman for the Denver Zoo, pointed out that the report does not indicate whether the surface was the cause of Hazina's inability to lift herself up during the trip. No one actually saw the hippo ever get up during the ride, which lasted more than 28 hours.

Bowie also said that the guidelines simply call for a non-slip surface but doesn't recommend what that surface entails.

Dancosse also questioned whether the crate was wide enough to permit the hippo to sleep with its four legs on one side, "but it's uncertain if the space allowed this hippo to do that," he wrote. The Denver Zoo spokeswoman countered that the container met the guidelines set forth by the IATA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Denver Zoo on Tuesday noted that it has shipped 14 other hippopotamuses successfully, but they all were under the age of 2 and weighed a lot less than Hazina.

"It seems clear that getting a hippo of this age and size to stand and move more frequently may have reduced the likelihood of myopathy," the Denver Zoo said in a prepared statement.

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