Teeth Cleaning

At the Zurich Zoo in Switzerland a number of visitors were charmed and amazed today. In an enclosure housing a zebra and a mother and baby hippopotamus the strangest thing was observed. The mother hippo opened her mouth wide and allowed the zebra to reach his head in and clean her teeth. This went on for 15 minutes while visitors observed and took pictures. Never once did the hippo attempt to harm the zebra and the zebra showed no fear while his head was in her mouth. The second link has more pictures.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/162634/Zebra-and-hippo-Open-wide-and-I-ll-clean-your-teeth
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1257204/Zebra-puts-head-hippos-mouth--escapes-unhurt-cleaning-predators-teeth.html

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Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over forty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. Contact Us

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 12, 2010
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Comments

they say hippos are agressive, especially when they have young. maybe the animals became more familiar because they live in the same enclosure. still how neat is it that the zebra spent 15 minutes with it's head in the hippo's mouth gently cleaning her teeth.

Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 03/12/10 at 11:21 PM

I'm with you VM. We're looking at two critters who aren't a natural threat to each other, have (I assume) lived in close proximity to each other and have, therefore, become familiar with one another. We've seen cats & dogs, cats & birds, and all kinds of strange combos on this site over the years but this, I admit, is our first hippo/zebra combo.

Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 03/13/10 at 12:27 AM

That's kinda gross :sick:

Posted by Ricemonkey on 03/13/10 at 01:04 AM

ewwwwwww :/

Posted by EmperorUnknown on 03/13/10 at 06:40 PM

strictly for my own peace of mind, i refuse to believe leilarattie's post is serious. :zip: :shut: :sick:

Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 03/13/10 at 10:43 PM

The article and picture shows that the bonding of different species in jungle.Where hippo shows its kind behavior rather than weird.

Posted by teeth on 06/14/13 at 12:24 AM

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