A beloved and popular hippopotamus at the National Zoological Park in San Salvador, El Salvador, may have been neglected and not brutally beaten to death, according to an autopsy report.
The report suggests Gustavito, a 15-year-old hippo who died on Feb. 26 after suffering for several days, died from poor care and not a beating attack that left the young animal with stab wounds and bruises, as the zoo’s director first reported last week.
Prosecutors are now pointing to the hippo's autopsy, which reportedly found no puncture wounds on the animal's body, the BBC reported. The report instead said Gustavito died of pulmonary hemorrhaging, or bleeding in his lungs, and that the bleeding was caused by poor care.
The culture minister, Silvia Elena Regalado, said the autopsy conclusion did not rule out a beating attack, either, because the stress of such an attack could have caused the hemorrhaging, AFP reported.
But a workers' union within the culture agency said Gustavito had been sick for more than two weeks before his death and accused authorities of failing to help the animal, according to a report from Yahoo.
Zoo officials announced last week that Gustavito was beaten with knives, rocks and metal bars last Tuesday night. Zoo director Vladan Henriquez said at a news conference later in the week that workers didn’t notice the hippo was injured right away, until he refused to leave his pool and stopped eating.
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Henriquez also said when workers took a closer look at the hippo, they saw he was badly injured, with severe beating injuries that included wounds to his feet, the inside of his mouth and his cheek, which Henriquez said happened as he tried to defend himself during the attack.
There were no surveillance cameras at the hippo’s enclosure, so officials can’t say for sure exactly what happened.
Hippos can live up to 50 years in the wild, according to the African Wildlife Foundation.
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