Bengals Or Rams: Hippo Fiona Picks Super Bowl LVI 2022 Winner

CINCINNATI, OH — Fiona is a homer.

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens’ celebrated hippopotamus, who won Americans’ hearts just by staying alive, knocked over a block of plastic with a Cincinnati Bengals logo affixed, thereby picking her choice in Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI game.

It’s pure poetry.

No one expected the Bengals to upset the reigning AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs in overtime to reach Super Bowl 2022, or for them to make it to the division finals at all. Betting lines show the Bengals to be the underdogs in the Super Bowl matchup against the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.

A bit of an underdog herself, Fiona was born six weeks prematurely on Jan. 24, 2017. She weighed only 29 pounds, about half the previous record for the lowest birth weight for a member of her species, normally born between 55 and 120 pounds.

When the newborn hippo became dehydrated and sick at only a few weeks, the Cincinnati Children's Hospital’s nationally renowned Vascular Access Team rehydrated her. The hippo’s celebrity was already sealed by then; Fiona made history in utero with the first-ever ultrasound image of a Nile hippopotamus fetus.

Fiona has been a celebrity ever since. She did a fun bit to “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” and photobombed engagement photos, but Fiona also granted a dying woman’s wish.

Fiona isn’t the only animal predicting the winner of Super Bowl LVI. At the Mote Marine Lab & Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida, manatees picked the Bengals.

You can watch Fiona make her pick below in this video from the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden.