Hungry Hippo Starts Eating with a Help of a Glove Puppet!

Chico caused keepers at his home in Heythrop Zoological Gardens concern when he began to refuse food. But the animal was lured back to his trough under the watchful eye of Gloria, a glove puppet based on the star character in DreamWorks children's film Madagascar.

Zoo keepers at the private zoo near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire had been "trying everything" to tempt the fussy eater back to his meals when they stumbled across the hippo glove puppet in a supermarket promotion.Now keepers don the glove puppet to hand feed the diminutive hippo, a relative of the larger hippopotamus on whom Gloria is based, his favourite carrot treats.

Despite his portly appearance, Chico had stopped feeding and was in danger of losing weight. In the wild, pygmy hippos can spend up to six hours a day eating, and need to consume one-and-a-half percent of their body weight every day to stay healthy