New hippo baby at Cincinnati Zoo: Today Show's Al Roker stuns co-hosts with birth control joke
The newest hippo baby at the Cincinnati Zoo is making national headlines, including on the Today Show.
The Cincinnati Zoo announced Bibi has given birth to her second baby hippo. The new addition to the family came around 10 p.m. Wednesday night.
The zoo says the baby and Bibi will not be visible to the public right away, but videos will be shared via social media by the zoo.
Tucker and Fiona will still be in their outdoor habitat as usual.
The zoo's dad-to-be Tucker arrived in Cincinnati in September from the San Francisco Zoo.
Bibi and Tucker bred in December, the zoo says.
“This calf looks huge to us because Fiona, Bibi’s first baby, only weighed 29 pounds when she was born six weeks premature and wasn’t able to stand on her own. This new calf weighs at least twice as much as Fiona did and is already walking," said Christina Gorsuch, Cincinnati Zoo’s director of animal care. “We’re not sure if nursing has occurred yet because the water is murky. It’s Bibi’s first time nursing, since Fiona had to be cared for by the hippo staff, so we’re keeping a close eye on them to make sure we don’t need to step in."
The hosts of the Today Show celebrated the birth of the new baby hippo on the show Thursday morning.
"Bibi is 23, the father, Tucker is 19," Savannah Guthrie said.
"That hippo's a cougar," Craig Melvin said.
They all joked that Bibi was on hippo birth control, so the birth was unexpected.
"I thought Kerry Sanders put in the IUD," Al Roker joked about the NBC reporter, leaving his co-hosts stunned and giggling.
But the hosts were right, the zoo staff was not expecting a baby so soon.
"It was a surprise, we were all taken aback, but now we just have pure excitement the entire team is thrilled to have a little hippo running around it's the best most fun time ever having a little hippo in the barn so we're very excited," Bibi's caretaker Jenna Wingate said.