Welcome to the Richmond Zoo’s newest pygmy hippo, that YOU can help name!

This has been the year of baby pygmy hippos thanks to social media. Now, we thought the babies were done arriving for the year, but the Metro Richmond Zoo had to throw in a last minute new birth to wrap it up. And best of all, you can have a say in this little dumpling’s name!

The new baby pygmy hippo was born on December 9, 2024, just in time for the holiday season. She’s the third baby born to seasoned parents Iris and Corwin in the last four and a half years and the second born to the pair in the holiday season. We get it, Iris and Corwin — spring in the mid-Atlantic is pretty magical. Interestingly enough, this is the first baby born to Mama Iris in the habitat’s indoor pool — common to their larger cousins but less so for pygmy hippos who are comfortable birthing on land or in water; this meant some zoo guests got to observe the baby’s entrance into the world!

Unlike Moo Deng and Haggis, Metro Richmond Zoo is getting the community from the start. They’ve placed a special poll online where people can vote on one of four options for the new little one’s name, with voting open from December 27 to 31. Frankly, these options may be the one thing to split Team Blizzard Watch into separate camps this year! You can choose from:

• Poppy, a flower like her mom.
• Juniper, an evergreen shrub, to honor her December birthday.
• Hammie Mae, as a sweet and southern tie to Virginia ham.
• Omi, which means “water” in Yoruba, spoken in the pygmy hippo homelands of West Africa.

Pygmy hippos are a scarce species that live primarily in pairs (instead of in a herd like their larger cousins), with an estimated global population of roughly 2000-2500 adults in the wild. The species is native to the forests and swamps of West Africa, primarily Liberia and Cote D’Ivoire. Habitat destruction and hunting have earned them an Endangered classification on the IUCN‘s Threatened Species (or Red) list, which makes this year’s new births all the more important to continuing pygmy hippos.

Like Haggis, the new baby will spend some quality bonding time with Mama Iris before relocating to an indoor pool area to be admired by zoo guests. In the interim, the zoo shares photos and videos of the newest resident on their social platforms: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter). And, of course, you can always follow other 2024 babies, Haggis, Moo Deng, and Toni from the Berlin Zoo (coming in a future post) while we await the name-vote results!