Moo Deng is a worldwide phenomenon. How long can this global love affair last?

By Stephanie Yang, Los Angeles Times

CHONBURI PROVINCE, Thailand — Like most babies, Moo Deng spends a lot of her time sleeping.

But for a few hours a day, the 4-month-old pygmy hippo springs to life, gumming on leaves, zooming around the compound and tossing her head in a silent, open-mouthed roar.

These moments, captured by her zookeeper at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo, a two-hour drive south of Bangkok, and shared on social media, have turned her into a global phenomenon — an “It Girl” beloved for her sporadic fits of energy and proclivity for snapping toothlessly at hoses and knees.

Named for a Thai dish that means “bouncy pork,” Moo Deng has become the muse for cakes, clothing, tattoos and fireworks. Make-up tutorials demonstrate how to get her baby-pink cheeks and dewy skin. Partygoers this year dressed up as the pygmy hippo for Halloween. So did comedian Bowen Yang on “Saturday Night Live.”

Her remote home — struggling post-pandemic — has been transformed into a must-see attraction for international visitors and locals alike.

When Dong Kim, a 29-year-old travel blogger, visited in October, the excited hordes reminded him less of a zoo than a South American soccer game or a Black Friday door-buster sale.

“I’ve gone to the Great Wall, I’ve been to the Colosseum, I’ve been to Christ the Redeemer in Rio. But [this] was by far the longest line I have ever waited in,” he said. “It literally felt like people would die for this hippo.”

But Moo Deng’s sudden celebrity was not merely a result of cute animal worship or the fact that the pygmy hippo, native to West Africa, is an endangered species. While she was gestating in her mother’s womb, a 31-year-old zookeeper was hatching a plan to make her a star — tapping into a worldwide culture well-versed in capitalizing on internet virality — and save the financially strapped zoo while he was at it.

Today Moo Deng is the most famous animal on the planet — for now.

Nearly 175 years before Moo Deng took the internet by storm, another exotic hippo helped save the world’s first modern zoo.

The London Zoo began in 1828 as a members-only community, but opened to the public in 1847 in an effort to earn enough money to stay afloat. Visitors grew bored until Obaysch, named after an island in the Nile where he was captured, arrived three years later. The first hippo seen in Europe since the Roman Empire, Obaysch doubled annual attendance, drawing up to 10,000 visitors every day.

“They had to figure out a way to keep the public interested,” said Robert Young, professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Salford in England. “The thing they came up with … celebrity animals.”

Fans quickly grew attached to their favorites. When the zoo sold Jumbo the Elephant to P.T. Barnum in 1882, people protested in the streets. A black bear named Winnipeg became the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh. Guy, a western lowland gorilla, received hundreds of birthday cards every year.

In the 20th century, animals in the news (Sea Biscuit) and movies and TV shows (Lassie, Punxsutawney Phil) captured the hearts of millions. Recently, social media has hastened the celebrity of animals such as Grumpy Cat and JiffPom the Pomeranian.

In 2017, Fiona the hippo went viral as the internet watched her fight to survive infancy. She became the biggest attraction at the Cincinnati Zoo, inspiring her own ice cream flavor and children’s book.

Leasing giant pandas from China has become another strategy to draw visitors. But foot traffic subsides after two years, Young said, while zoos spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on bamboo that the pandas sometimes refuse. Pygmy hippos can be housed and supported at a much lower cost.

Huanyuan Zhang, a college lecturer at the University of Oxford who studies West African forest ecology, was surprised to see a sudden uptick this year in references to his research. He was even more perplexed to discover the cause was a pygmy hippo born more than 6,000 miles from its native land.

“It just feels like, out of many friends, one of your normal friends suddenly becomes a celebrity,” said Zhang, who hopes that the world’s love for Moo Deng will raise awareness of deforestation and endangered species. There are fewer than 2,500 pygmy hippos alive today compared with 12,000 in 1982.

Young said zoos often rely on ambassador animals to bring attention to lesser-known species. But social media, he noted, will always favor the Moo Dengs of the world.

“The big issue,” he said, “is how do you get people interested in the uglies? Getting people to want to save a gorilla is quite easy. You try and get people to want to save the aye-aye, possibly the ugliest primate on the planet, it’s a very different situation.”

Four years after the pandemic choked off travel, the Khao Kheow Open Zoo had yet to recover from the financial devastation. With only a couple of thousand visitors per day, the budget to maintain the 2,000-acre zoo was stretched to its limits. Anticipating the birth of Moo Deng, zookeeper Atthapon Nundee sensed an opportunity.

Nundee had studied to become an electrician, but his first job out of college was driving a 10-wheeler truck around the country. After three years, he started looking for something closer to home. The zoo, a five-minute commute, had an opening.

Over the next eight years, Nundee cared for baby hippos including two of Moo Deng’s siblings: Moo Wan and Moo Tun, also named after Thai pork dishes. Though Moo Deng is known for her spunky attitude, Nundee said her siblings were just as playful. So with one more on the way, Nundee was ready.

“I know when they become funny, how to set up the camera, which angle to take to see when it’s cute,” he said. “Any animal can become famous like Moo Deng. It’s just about how friendly you are with the animal.”

Moo Deng’s celebrity did not start at the moment of birth. To his dismay, Nundee discovered her crawling around the morning of July 10, placenta still attached. Their star had been born, and no one was there to document it.

But in August, the zoo posted a poll online asking the public to help choose her name. Nundee’s close-ups of her splashing in the water and snapping at the air started circulating on social media. Admirers called her sweet, or feisty, or filled with silent rage. Japanese residents working at the local industrial park shared their fan art, boosting Moo Deng’s popularity in Asia before her stardom spread west.

By September, the meme-ification of Moo Deng caught the attention of Molly Swindall, an influencer who posts about baby animals and attending Taylor Swift concerts. The 29-year-old was so enchanted that, in early October, she flew more than 18 hours to Thailand, stood at Moo Deng’s enclosure for four hours, and then returned to New York the next day.

“She’s absolutely iconic,” Swindall said. “Whether it’s a leaf being stuck to her face for a couple hours, or her moon-walking or biting knees, or running around with rage, she just makes you laugh.”

By the time she returned for a second visit, the zoo had implemented a five-minute limit for spectators, after some were caught tossing water and shells to try and rouse Moo Deng. Swindall still went through the queue three times, waiting about 30 to 40 minutes each round.

The baby hippo’s economic impact has spread far beyond the confines of the sprawling zoo in the Chonburi province.

Miles before the entrance, posters advertise Moo Deng ice cream. The restaurants in the area fill up at lunch time, and on weekends, makeshift stalls sell snacks along the road. The influx of tourists has boosted local incomes by 50% or more, nearby workers said. The month that Moo Deng was born, the zoo had fewer than 85,000 visitors. In October, total attendance rose to 300,000.

Decha Sontanawan, 59, spent about $1,000 to turn an old truck into a merchandise stall for Moo Deng pillows, keychains and T-shirts to sell outside the zoo. He recouped his investment within four days.

Now Sontanawan, his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law, who all work at the zoo, take turns manning the Moo Deng truck on their days off. “Everything is better. Everything’s recovered, everything’s booming,” he said.

Skyrocketing demand has transformed Moo Deng into a brand. About 70 companies have paid the zoo for the rights to print Moo Deng on products such as pajamas, pet food and squeezable condensed milk. A supermarket chain launched its own Moo Deng-themed coconut juice after signing a contract that Monday afternoon, and a Thai business newspaper has reported that collaborations are expected to generate as much as $4.3 million by March.

The money now accounts for 30% of revenue, according to Narongwit Chodchoy, the zoo director, with proceeds going to zoo habitats and living conditions, as well as flood victims in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.

“We have to try to keep her fame and reputation going,” he said, although, at some point Moo Deng will lose some of her youthful “bounciness,” and thus some of her charm.

That’s why the zoo is already pursuing its next viral hit. A pair of two-toed sloths is on the way, in the hopes that with three — two males and one female— the zoo will produce another small star. If so, the baby also will be managed by Moo Deng’s keeper, who has enjoyed his own rise in fame, if not in pay.

For now, Moo Deng is still going strong. Other baby pygmy hippos born this year in Sydney, Berlin and Edinburgh, have failed to match her allure. The Edinburgh Zoo promoted its newborn pygmy hippo Haggis this month as a rival to Moo Deng’s famed cuteness. It later apologized for pitting the babies against each other.

When a common hippo was born in Eastern Thailand last month, she was named by an online poll too, and christened Hom Daeng, the Thai word for “Shallot.” Pygmy hippo fans couldn’t help but compare. One Facebook user complained that Hom Daeng was too dry, unlike Moo Deng, who appears perpetually moist in photos.

“This one has no aura at all,” another critic wrote. “It’s like comparing a celebrity to an ordinary person.”

Special correspondent Poypiti Amatatham in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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