Bongos/Rhino #3

Though I've never visited the Cleveland Zoo, I happen to have in my library its 1960 guide book called the "Bongo Edition," like so - - Had there been a male west African bongo in Cleveland in 1960 the guide would surely have noted it. Moreover, in 1961 Zoo Director Leonard Goss penned a paper about Karen and talked only about her. His paper was published in 1961 in International Zoo Yearbook, London, Vol 2, p. 82. Now all that having been said, Lee Crandall (1964) reported that a west African bongo (origin Ghana) did arrive in Cleveland in June 1963. A Cleveland zoo history site adds he was named Biff. Alas, I have no photo. Now to the pygmy hippo - - My 1960 Cleveland guide says that a pygmy hippo received in May 1955 reportedly originated in Nigeria. If that is true, it would have been the almost mystical Cheropsis liberiensis heslopi . As far as is known, no (other) example of heslopi has ever been seen alive in a zoo. Mike Grayson will be interested in this. He wrote a paper about the Nigerian pygmy hip that was published in Zoo Grapevine, winter 2012. The editors of the guide, zoo director Leonard Goss and general curator Ron Reuther (whom I got to know), were both very knowledgeable and pointed out that such a pygmy hippo would be most unusual. [Sidebar - - -As information, the aforesaid Vol 2 of IZN also has my retrospective list of all Asian and white rhinos exhibited in captivity, worldwide, up to that time. As surprising as it seems today, at that time only 13 white rhinos had ever been in captivity and all were then living. Ten of them were the now nearly extinct northern whites and the 3 others were southern whites in the Pretoria SA zoo] I hope some of this is of interest. Richard