Unique in every way, just like every experience you will find at Royal Zambezi, so too is our resident pink hippo! Hippos in Zambia are plentiful, with pods of up to 40 or 60 clustered throughout the Zambezi river. But the majority of those hippos are purplish grey-brown, with an underside of pink… well not our Pink Floyd, who is pink all over! Making him as special as they come and just another addition to our famous family of wildlife here at Royal Zambezi.

Contrary to popular belief, Floyd is not an albino but is actually leucistic, a condition where the pigmentation of cells in an animal has not developed properly and so his skin produces less pigment than usual. This means that unlike the other hippos, he doesn’t have quite the same protection from the sun.

A real crowd-pleaser due to his rare skin colouring, Floyd resides on the island just to the left of the lodge, where during the day he can be found wallowing and bubbling in the mud, or completely submerged under the water with his pink eyes and nostrils twitching above the water’s edge as he seeks cool relief from the insistent African sun. At night he joins his hippo pals as they journey on to land to graze the night away – nature’s very own lawnmowers!

Living a hippo’s dream, he spends his days grunting, and chuckling as he blows bubbles and basks in the thick and sludgy banks of the Zambezi, he is an utter delight to watch- tickling us, well… pink! Named in his honour, next time you visit us at the Sausage Tree Bar, order yourself up a delicious and refreshing Pink Hippo cocktail as you watch him chortling away.