Hippo get teeth cleaned by Malawi cichlids

[football mom]

My friend and I went to the San Antonio zoo last week, and the best
thing there was the huge tank with hundreds of large mbuna, peacocks and haps, and there tank-mates, two hippos.

One of them opened its mouth, and the cichlids swarmed in to pick his teeth!

 

[DiscusnAfricans]

Great shots! Really neat example of a mutually beneficial relationship. Do hippos inhabit Lake Malawi or its surrounding tributaries?

 

[YSS]

Very cool!

 

[illpoet]

not sure about lake malawi but i remember Mr. Kent talking about how a hippo had killed one of the locals in the lake victoria/gordon area. still that is a really cool tank. i wonder if there'll be any hippo's at the aca auction...

 

[Hawkman2000]

THATS FREAKIN AWESOME. To bad you couldn't get a good zoom in shot for the photo of the month contest.

 

[Tony]

Great pictures!

I remember seeing this on one of those Discovery shows - Planet Earth maybe.

Think they have native carp that survive by eating the grass that the hippos um... "bring" into the water with them. Without the hippos, they would starve.

 

[TKC7]

Yupm very cool (+1)

 

[football mom]

Ha, about the carp...there were some large carp-looking fish that I couldn't identify...
and there was some ah-hem...grass...deposited in the water.

 

[verbal]

not sure about lake malawi but i remember Mr. Kent talking about how a hippo had killed one of the locals in the lake victoria/gordon area. still that is a really cool tank. i wonder if there'll be any hippo's at the aca auction...

It looks like hippos do live in Lake Malawi:
http://www.guideforafrica.com/malawi/lake-malawi-guide.html

As for the ACA auction it looks like it will be a Cichlid-only auction, so I doubt a hippo would qualify