For a few weeks in September 2024, images of a small, plump baby hippo seemed to be everywhere online.
There were plenty of photographs and videos to choose from. The pygmy hippopotamus was Moo Deng, whose name is often translated as “bouncy pork.” People put their own captions on her expressions, then shared the pictures with someone else who had probably already seen her.
Moo Deng was about two months old at the time, living at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. Her much larger mother and the keepers around her supplied a useful sense of scale. The open mouth and little round body did the rest. Before long, a hippo calf had become a reaction image.
Why Is Moo Deng Special?
Moo Deng belongs to the rarer of the two living hippo species. There is the well-known common hippopotamus, and then there is the much smaller pygmy hippo.
Pygmy hippos tend to live solitary lives and are difficult to study in the wild. Their numbers are small too. WWF estimates that 2,000 to 2,500 remain in the wild and describes the species as endangered. Habitat loss and hunting are among the threats.
Conservation groups, including ZSL, work to study and protect them. The zoo photographs introduced a lot of people to an animal they knew little about.
That novelty was part of Moo Deng’s appeal. A brief video of a calf at a zoo is only a small glimpse of the species, but it was a glimpse people wanted to watch again.
Why Is Moo Deng a Viral Sensation?
The internet loves cute creatures. Dogs, cats and, apparently, dewy-looking pygmy hippos all have a place in the feed. Moo Deng arrived with plenty of expressions that seemed ready for a caption.
The captions were ours, of course. A hippo opening her mouth had not actually composed a complaint about anyone’s working week.
Researchers have studied people’s responses to baby-like features in animal images. That offers one possible explanation for the appeal, rather than a complete account of why Moo Deng caught on.
Her small size, rounded features and pink skin certainly made her easy to recognize in a photograph. You did not need to read the caption to know which hippo you were looking at.
There was also something pleasantly undemanding about following a little hippo for a few minutes. The jokes gave viewers a break, even though they could not tell us what Moo Deng was actually feeling. Caring for the animal remained the keepers’ job.
The pictures made an endangered species familiar to people far beyond the zoo. Moo Deng was both an internet character and a real calf growing up while everyone watched.
