Fiona's parents are Henry and Bibi. She is the first Nile hippo to be born at the Cincinnati Zoo in 75 years, and the first of the species to be scanned in the womb using ultrasound. She was born six weeks premature on January 24, 2017, with a birth weight of ; the recorded range of birth weights for the species at that time was. She was unable to stand and required bottle feeding with milk from her mother, supplemented with infant formula. This was the first time a hippopotamus had been milked and the milk analyzed. The following month, while teething, she began refusing her bottle and became dehydrated; a catheter for the delivery of intravenous fluids was inserted with the assistance of members of the vascular access team at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. The preemie team had previously sent the zoo a care package for her. Zoo staff named the baby hippo Fiona because her ears made them think of a Shrek heroine, and also because it means "fair". Fiona took her first steps on February 5, weighed by May 31, when she was introduced to the media, and by June had reached a normal weight of ; by the time she was six months old, she weighed over, and in late August,. On her first birthday, January 24, 2018, she weighed more than. By December 26, 2018, she weighed slightly over ; on her third birthday in January 2020,.
Popularity
The Fiona Show was launched on Facebook in August 2017. Saving Fiona, a children's book about her written by the zoo's director, Thane Maynard, was published in June 2018. A video posted on social media by the zoo went viral, as did a couple's photographs of Fiona watching them get engaged in October 2017. In August 2018 a mural of Fiona was unveiled in downtown Cincinnati; Lucie Rice won the contest to design it. Fiona appeared in Cincinnati Ballet's December 2018 production of Nutcracker, played by a dancer, and "stole the show". Fiona has been used to "predict" the result of the Superbowl each year since her birth, by choosing between enrichment items with the two teams' emblems. She chose the winning team in 2018, chose wrong in 2019, and in 2020 vomited on the item representing the Kansas City Chiefs. Illustrator Richard Cowdrey has written two books about Fiona, including a Christmas book, A Very Fiona Christmas.
