Moo Deng Is More Than a Meme

Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of Moo Deng. The baby pygmy hippo is barely two months old and already famous. So beloved on TikTok , Instagram , and X is Moo Deng that workers at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, the place in Thailand where she was born, are doing all they can to keep up with her fans’ appetite for more.

They post videos, photos, updates. They also welcome thousands of visitors a day and find themselves having to defend Moo Deng when tourists throw shells at her while she’s just trying to chill. Moo Deng, a name that means “bouncy pig,” has probably been all over your timeline lately—on Sephora makeup tutorials , on X’s main feed .



She was born in July and in the past few weeks has become the Internet’s New Favorite Animal. A tradition almost as old as the internet itself, Favorite Animals—Maru, any of the dogs on the shiba inu puppy cam , those two llamas who just happened to run free the same day everyone was trying to decide what color The Dress was—come into the public consciousness seemingly out of nowhere. Some, like Doge , stick around; others disappear, or simply outgrow their cuteness, within a matter of weeks.

All of which makes capitalizing on their fame a matter of some urgency. It seems heartless to think of animals this way, but if their owners don’t, someone else will. Perhaps that’s why zoo director Narongwit Chodchoi told the Associated Press this week that the zoo has begun the process of trying to trademark and patent the hippo .