The Baby Hippo Who Adopted a 130-Year-Old Tortoise

A one-year-old hippo washed out to sea by a tsunami ended up choosing a giant tortoise as his mother. It sounds like a children's book. It is one, several times over, but it started as a real rescue on the Kenyan coast.

Swept Out to Sea

On December 26, 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami tore through the coastline near Malindi, Kenya. A pod of hippos living along the Sabaki River was caught in the surge and swept out toward the ocean. Most of the herd made it back to land. One calf, roughly a year old and weighing close to 600 pounds, did not. He was found exhausted and stranded on a coral reef offshore, too far out to swim back on his own.

Hundreds of Villagers, One Terrified Hippo

Word spread quickly through Malindi, and hundreds of local villagers turned out to help. The rescue took most of a day and used ropes, fishing nets, small boats, and cars to try to corner the panicked animal. He was still fast and strong despite his exhaustion, and it eventually took a diving tackle from one of the volunteers to bring him down. The crowd, watching from the shore, agreed on the spot that the hippo should be named after the man who caught him: Owen.

He Chose a Tortoise as His Mother

Owen was taken to Haller Park, a wildlife sanctuary near Mombasa run by conservationist Dr. Paula Kahumbu. With no other hippos around, keepers released him into an enclosure that already had a resident: Mzee, an Aldabra giant tortoise believed to be about 130 years old. Mzee's dark, rounded shell was roughly the size and color of an adult hippo, and the frightened calf latched onto him instantly, cowering behind him the way a baby hippo would shelter behind its mother.

Mzee was not thrilled about it at first. He hissed and pulled away, unused to sharing his space with anyone. Owen kept following anyway, staying close at every turn, and within days the tortoise gave in. Keepers reported the pair eating, swimming, and sleeping side by side, with Owen nudging Mzee along and grooming him the way hippos groom each other.

A Friendship That Outgrew Itself

The bond lasted for years and made global headlines, inspiring the 2006 book Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship by Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff, and Paula Kahumbu, along with a sequel and an off-Broadway musical. Eventually, though, Owen grew into a full-sized adult hippo, weighing well over a ton, and it was no longer safe for him to share close quarters with an elderly tortoise. Keepers moved him in with other hippos, including a female named Cleo, whom he bonded with in turn.

Mzee returned to his original enclosure among Haller Park's other tortoises and reptiles, where he remains a park favorite.