Obaysch

Obaysch (* 1849 on the island Obaysch in the White Nile, Sudan today, † March 11, 1878 in London Zoo, United Kingdom) was the first hippopotamus in England and the first in Europe until then demonstrably alive has become known since a mention in Pliny d. Ä. It was as a cub on his native island, after which it was named, captured in 1850 and brought from Cairo to London, where it triggered enormous enthusiasm.

Background

Unlike elephants and rhinos that were as prince gifts or fairground attractions publicly known as a rare spectacle living in Europe since the 16th century, hippos were in the recent history only of ancient and modern reports, natural histories currently living without intuition. Herodotus had described in his Histories, likewise, they appeared in the Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder on which also mentions the existence of a hippo in Rome. However, the ancient descriptions were not very accurate. According to Herodotus, the animal had a horse's mane and Pliny claimed it wander backwards to complicate its pursuit.

The Neapolitan doctor Federico Zerenghi brought in 1600 from a trip the skins of two hippos, which he had caught in Egypt pitfalls to Rome. The museum Specola in Florence an old and by an artist worked preparation of a hippo can be visited; the animal to have come as a gift to Peter Leopold of Habsburg- Lorraine, 1765-1790 also Grand Duke of Tuscany, Florence and there lived in the Boboli Gardens a few years, but for what there is no contemporary confirmation. The famous French naturalist Georges- Louis Leclerc de Buffon described in his Histoire naturelle générale et particulière (from 1749) the hippo after a skull and a fetus, which were in the " Cabinets of the King ".

Life

The Khedive of Egypt Abbas Pasha brought the hippo in 1849 with a Nile expedition. One of his hunters had discovered that probably only a few days old male calf in the reeds of the Nile River Obaysch after the mother had been killed. When trying to cope with the poor, the slippery mud animal, however, was entrutscht him and had the size wanted in the water. The hunter could pull it back to shore with a long fishing hook, it hurt but it on the side. The animal kept a scar that can be seen clearly in a photo from 1852 yet.

The cub was initially spent with a specially constructed for its transport boat, along with an entourage of Nubian soldiers on the Nile to Cairo. Abbas Pasha gave the now -called calf Obaysch the British Consul General, Sir Charles Augustus Murray, later known as Hippopotamus Murray, along with some other exotic animals and received in exchange Greyhounds. From Cairo, the hippo was shipped to Southampton; it reached the London Zoo on May 25, 1850.

Abbas Pasha sent yet a second hippo to England, who arrived in London on 22 July 1854. It was female, was given the name Adhela and Obaysch was associated as partner. It took sixteen years until the couple finally got 1871 junior year; the calf died but after two days. A second calf also died in the following year, only a third, born on November 5, 1872, survived. It was a female and was named Guy Fawkes. After the guards had noticed their mistake, it was renamed Miss Guy. Adhela survived Obaysch by four years; She died on 16 December 1882. Miss Guy had no offspring.

Obaysch as a crowd favorite

Obaysch was after his arrival at once for permanent sensation of the London Zoo. Every day 10,000 people came to admire the animal, and in the first year after his arrival, the number of zoo visitors had doubled itself. With the exception of the African elephant Jumbo no other zoo animal in England is so often appeared in the press and become as popular as Obaysch. The hippo sparked a brisk trade in souvenirs and inspired the composition of a Hippopotamus Polka. Lewis Carroll wrote a poem about the extraordinary appetite of Hippo. Queen Victoria led their children to his enclosure and left some notes on the behavior of the animal in her diary.

Biographical material about Obaysch is now in the library of the Zoological Society of London. Upon entering the library, the visitor encounters a sculpture by Obaysch of fired clay from the Nile.