Starting Wednesday, visitors at the Paris Zoo in Paris, France will have a new attraction named Aldo who looks, eats and behaves like a hippopotamus but is only about as long as a human baby.

This three-week old pygmy hippo, which is just 21 inches long, was bred and born June 5 at the Paris Zoo in a special program to boost the rare species. Since the start of the breeding project in the early 1990s, 47 males have been born and 66 females. Aldo's older siblings reside in Spain and Britain.

Common hippos are gregarious, live in herds, and are well adapted to life in the water. By contrast, the pygmy hippo is a shy, solitary, forest dweller that is still hunted by natives for its meat. When encountering people, it flees at once into the nearest river or swamp.

According to AP reports, there are no more than 3,000 pygmy hippos worldwide, mostly in West African countries such as Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau or Liberia.

The pygmy hippo is a herbivore and also nocturnal. It is one of only two extant species in the hippopotamus family. Little is known about the pygmy hippo's diet or behavior, although it is clear that the pygmy hippo is adapted to forest environments rather than the more open plains and grasslands that the hippopotamus prefers.