Posts tagged "kenya"

Paging Lisa Frank! This delightful pink hippopotamus was spotted recently at the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, Africa. Photographers Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas were enjoying a picnic when they saw the whimsically hued hippo and started snapping, according to Fox News. The hippo is probably leucistic, a condition similar to albinism, but characterized by a lack of all types of skin pigmentation instead of only melanin.

We'd like the hippo to make friends with that pink dolphin from the Amazon, but it's probably just wishful thinking. Instead, we're planning a trip to Masai Mara to look for green, yellow, and orange hippos that we can put together with this one. Then we'll feed them ping-pong balls.

Fast and faster: Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who holds world records for the 100-meter and the 200-meter, is frequently described as the fastest man on Earth. The cheetah, which can sprint 70 miles per hour, is hands-down the fastest land animal on the planet. So it was a match made in speed-demon heaven when the aptly-named Bolt adopted a cheetah cub, Yahoo News reported.

Unlike Bai Ling, however, Bolt won't be welcoming the speedy feline into his home. The star athlete is sponsoring the 3-month-old cheetah, named Lightning Bolt, in an effort to support wildlife conservation in Kenya, according to Yahoo News.

Lightning Bolt and his two cheetah siblings were abandoned by their mother in a Kenyan game park, and are now being cared for by an animal orphanage in Nairobi, the nation's capital. Bolt paid the Kenya Wildlife Service $13,700 to adopt the cub, and he's agreed to pay $3,000 a year for the feline's care, reports Yahoo News. The money will also be used to protect Kenya's charismatic endangered species.

As a three-time Olympic gold medalist, Bolt has given his fans plenty of reasons to cheer. As far as we're concerned, his adoption of Lightning Bolt is worthy of one great big standing ovation.