Moo Deng, Thailand’s lovable pygmy hippo, sparks a wave of memes | Animals

CHONBURI, Thailand (AP) — Only a month after Thailand’s lovable child hippo Moo Deng was unveiled on Facebook, her fame grew to become unstoppable.

Fans unable to make the two-hour drive to Khao Kheow Open Zoo from the Thai capital Bangkok to see her in particular person can watch her video clips on-line, or just scroll by social media to savor meme after meme.

Zookeeper Atthapon Nundee has been posting cute moments of the animals in his take care of about 5 years. He by no means imagined the zoo’s new child pygmy hippo would develop into an web megastar inside weeks.

Cars began lining up exterior the zoo effectively earlier than it opened Thursday. Visitors traveled from close to and much for a likelihood to see the pudgy, expressive 2-month-old in particular person on the zoo about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Bangkok. The pit the place Moo Deng lives with her mom, Jona, was packed virtually instantly, with folks cooing and cheering each time the pink-cheeked child animal made skittish actions.

“It was beyond expectation,” Atthapon informed The Associated Press. “I wanted people to know her. I wanted a lot of people to visit her, or watch her online, or leave fun comments. I never would’ve thought (of this).”

Moo Deng, which accurately means “bouncy pork” in Thai, is a kind of meatball. The identify was chosen by followers through a ballot on social media, and it matches her different siblings: Moo Toon (stewed pork) and Moo Waan (candy pork). There can also be a widespread hippo on the zoo named Kha Moo (stewed pork leg).

“She’s such a little lump. I want to ball her up and swallow her whole!” mentioned Moo Deng fan Areeya Sripanya whereas visiting the zoo Thursday.

Artists have drawn cartoons, desserts and latte artwork based mostly on her, and social media platform X even featured her in its official account’s post.

Her image adorns memes by German soccer team FC Bayern, American basketball staff Phoenix Suns, and American soccer staff Washington Commanders, in addition to the New York Mets. Simple photograph manipulation places her in a selection of headgear or human-like conditions.

Businesses, too, have utilized her picture. Sephora Thailand has a make-up tip — “wear your blush like a baby hippo” — highlighting her pink cheeks, whereas meals supply app Grab Thailand imagined with pictures what type of meal she might garnish.

With all that fame, zoo director Narongwit Chodchoi mentioned they've begun copyrighting and trademarking “Moo Deng the hippo” to stop the animal from being commercialized by anybody else. “After we do this, we will have more income to support activities that will make the animals’ lives better,” he mentioned.

The zoo sits on 800 hectares (virtually 2,000 acres) of land and is residence to greater than 2,000 animals. It runs breeder packages for a lot of endangered species like Moo Deng’s. The pygmy hippopotamus that’s native to West Africa is threatened by poaching and loss of habitat. There are solely 2,000-3,000 of them left within the wild.

To assist fund the initiative, the zoo is making Moo Deng shirts and pants that shall be prepared on the market on the finish of the month, with extra merchandise to come back.

Narongwit believes a issue of Moo Deng’s fame is her identify, which compliments her energetic and chaotic persona captured in Atthapon’s inventive captions and video clips.

Appropriately, Moo Deng likes to “deng,” or bounce, and Atthapon has many moments of her giddy bouncing on social media. Even when she’s not bouncing, the hippo is endlessly cute — squirming as Atthapon tries to scrub her, biting him whereas he was making an attempt to play along with her, calmly closing her eyes as he rubs her pinkish cheeks or her chubby stomach.

Atthapon, who has labored on the zoo for eight years taking care of hippos, sloths, capybaras and binturongs, mentioned child hippos are often extra playful and energetic, they usually develop into calmer as they become older.

The zoo noticed a spike in guests since Moo Deng’s fame — a lot that the zoo now has to restrict public entry to the child’s enclosure to 5-minute home windows all through the day throughout weekends.

Narongwit mentioned the zoo has been receiving over 4,000 guests throughout a weekday, up from round simply 800 folks, and greater than 10,000 throughout a weekend, up from round 3,000 folks.

But the celebrity has additionally introduced some aggressive guests to Moo Deng, who solely wakes up able to play about two hours a day. Some movies confirmed guests splashing water or throwing issues on the sleeping Moo Deng to attempt to wake her up. The hippo pit now has a warning signal in opposition to throwing issues at Moo Deng, posted prominently on the entrance in Thai, English and Chinese.

Narongwit mentioned the zoo would take motion beneath the animal safety regulation if folks mistreat the animal. But clips emerged of folks treating Moo Deng poorly, and the backlash was fierce. The zoo director mentioned that since then, they haven’t seen anybody doing it once more.

For followers who can’t make the journey or are discouraged after seeing the crowds for Moo Deng, the Khao Kheow Open Zoo arrange cameras and plan to start out a 24-hour reside feed of the child hippo within the coming week.