Mini-pill no use to these big girls

Press, 28 March 1979, Page 7

Mini-pill no use to these big girls

PA Auckland Even a hippopotamus might balk at a contraceptive pill the size of a football. But according to the director of the Auckland Zoo (Mr D. Wood) that is how big the hippopotamus hormone dose would have to be. He said the zoo had too many hippos and some way would have to be found to control the colony. The zoo’s six hippos — two lots of parents each with a juvenile — live in their family groups in two enclosures. The waterways passing through their domain have increased (because of offflow from new motorway works) and in heavy rain serious flooding makes their enclosures insecure, as two recent scares within weeks of each other have shown. Approved maintenance was being done to make the enclosures safer and plans were under way to build only two new enclosures at a new site, Mr Wood said. A colony of four or five hippos would be adequate for exhibitions at a zoo the size of Auckland’s and it would be self-maintain-ing, he said. The colony had been kept at six so far by natural deaths and hippo homicides, but such a haphazard method of population control was unrealistic.

Sexual segregation was also not feasible, Mr Wood said. The females lived well together but the males did not and when they started fighting they turned into killers. Hippos were hard to sell from New Zealand: they were so big and heavy that transport costs from remote New Zealand made them too expensive for overseas zoos. The only solution left seemed to be an active birth control programme. But Mr Wood said he did not favour oral con-

traceptives for the hippos. While the hippos seemed to have their mouths open often and it might seem easy for a keeper to stroll past every day and toss in a pill, he did not think it was practical. He had never heard of its happening and he thought the pills would have to be the size of a football. Th r e e-month contraceptive injections might be the most satisfactory method, Mr Wood said.