( MENAFN - The Conversation) The playful and pudgy mammal that went viral from its Thai zoo enclosure has a sad story to tell about her fellows hippos. Moo Deng is the two-month-old pygmy hippo who flicks her ears in joy and likes splashing in water. She lives the life of a superstar at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, where huge crowds have massed – but the chances of spotting her relatives in the wild are slim.
Pygmy hippos (Choeropsis liberiensis) are endangered and estimated to number fewer than 2,500. Their decline has been drastic: a long-term survey in a national park in Ivory Coast found 12,000 pygmy hippos in 1982; 5,000 in 1997 and 2,000 in 2011. Today, these hippos are scarce across their native west Africa.
Perhaps it's not surprising that pygmy hippos feel most comfortable deep in the forest. Early European explorers to Liberia wrote in their diaries that this hippo chooses to forage at night and conceal itself in the water or in dense vegetation during the day. So secretive is this species that 19th-century explorers observed: Widespread deforestation and constant disturbance have made it difficult for pygmy hippos to survive, requiring as they do a combination of dense forests and swamps which already restricted them to a small area.
West African forests have lost over 80% of their original area , which confines wild pygmy hippos to small spots in Gola National Forest (Sierra Leone) and Sapo National Park (Liberia). With their forests rapidly disappearing, there simply i.
