14 DAY TRIAL // Zoo Santo Inácio in Portugal is now home to a baby pygmy hippo that was born at this facility earlier this year and that, simply put, is as cute as a button.
The young hippo, a photo of which is available above, is a girl, zoo employees have told the press in a recent interview. Vets say that it is in perfectly good health and that its mom is doing a very good job looking after it.
Not at all surprisingly, the baby pygmy hippo appears to also be very affectionate. Thus, word has it that it just loves to cuddle with its mom, and that the latter is more than happy to cuddle it back.
The back news is that, for the time being, the International Union for Conservation of Nature considers pygmy hippos to be an endangered species, Zoo Borns tells us.
According to conservationist now fighting to save this species from going extinct in the near future, pygmy hippos currently face many threats, among which deforestation, hunting, and habitat loss as a result of agricultural development.
For those unaware, pygmy hippos are native to forests and swamps in West Africa. If estimates released by conservationists are right, just 3,000 such animals are now left in the wild.