Over the past several weeks, images of a clumsy, rosy-cheeked baby hippo have flooded the internet. Plenty of photos and videos of the pygmy hippopotamus have gone viral, showing her biting her caretakers, mimicking her mother’s grass-chomping and displaying frenzied expressions. Her name is Moo Deng, she’s two months old—and she’s a viral sensation.
Moo Deng’s celebrity status is no accident. Atthapon Nundee, her zookeeper at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand, has been posting adorable moments of the zoo’s animals for several years. But Moo Deng’s level of fame was not something he expected, and it has catapulted the zoo’s visitors on the average weekday from several hundred to thousands.
“It was beyond expectation,” Atthapon tells the Associated Press ’ Jintamas Saksornchai. “I wanted people to know her. I wanted a lot of people to visit her, or watch her online, or leave fun comments.
” Moo Deng the most beautiful girl in the world pic.twitter.com/gTf9HTR0dk But Moo Deng, whose name translates to “bouncy pork,” is even more special than you might think.
As a pygmy hippo ( Choeropsis liberiensis ), Moo Deng belongs to the rarer of the two extant species of hippo in the world. The more well-known one is the common hippo ( Hippopotamus amphibius ). The differences between the two start with their size: Common hippos can weigh ten times more than pygmy hippos, with the largest males clocking in at nearly 10,000 pounds and females weighing roughly 3,0.