An animal keeper from the National Zoo told the Washington Post what 27-year-old Happy the hippopotamus likes to eat:
The 6,000-pound hippo consumes seven pounds of herbivore pellets, 4 1/2 pounds of fruits and vegetables and 35 pounds of hay -- in one day. Wild hippos consume as much as 88 pounds of grass per night, but as a percentage of their body weight (1 to 1.5 percent), that's only about half the amount required by other hoofed mammals.
The shopping list for the whole zoo includes 6,000 pounds of apples, 2,000 pounds of oranges, 2,000 pounds of papayas, and 1,200 ears of corn on the cob. That sounds like a nice picnic!
