1000’s of excited followers flocked to a Thai zoo on Thursday to rejoice the primary birthday of Moo Deng, the lovely child pygmy hippo that has turn into a social media sensation.
The Khao Kheow Open Zoo was overrun with Moo Deng followers on the primary of 4 days of actions marking the hippo’s birthday. Kids underneath 12 years previous can enter the zoo, a couple of two-hour drive from the capital Bangkok, without spending a dime all through the extravaganza.
Excited followers
Lots of Moo Deng’s followers flew miles to see her.
Moo Deng (R), a 1-year-old feminine pygmy hippo who turned a viral web sensation, eats birthday cake together with her mom at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi province on July 10, 2025.
CHANAKARN LAOSARAKHAM/AFP through Getty Photos
Amongst them was Molly Swindall, who traveled from New York for the celebrations. She was seen handing a tray of meals to a zoo keeper for Moo Deng’s breakfast, which the child hippo and her mom Jona shortly devoured.
“I just loved her so much and decided, you know what, I have three or four days off of work,” Swindall mentioned. “I can make it work to fly to Thailand. I will only be there for about 30 hours, but that’s enough to go see Moo Deng. And that’s exactly what I did.”
By Thursday afternoon, the variety of guests reached 12,000, zoo director Narongwit Chodchoy mentioned. Regardless of the noise of tourists calling out for her consideration, Moo Deng appeared peaceable as she took a dip in a pond in her enclosure.
Followers photographed the child hippo with their cameras or cell telephones and sang “Happy birthday” as her birthday cake, manufactured from a wide range of vegetables and fruit, was positioned close to the pond.
Moo Deng eats a fruit topped cake together with her mom Jonah throughout a celebration for her first birthday on the Khao Kheow Open Zoo on July 10, 2025 in Pattaya, Thailand. T
Lauren DeCicca / Getty Photos
“Moo Deng is my happy pill, and she’s my energy pill, my curing pill. She’s my vitamin!” mentioned Thea Chavez, who flew in from Houston, Texas.
One other fan, Jennifer Tang from Malaysia, leaned over the enclosure to take footage.
“She makes me happy. Whenever I’m stressed at work I pull up photos of Moo Deng,” Tang mentioned. “So my whole office knows that I’m here … They let me take a week off.”
The zoo held on-line auctions to rejoice Moo Deng’s birthday, with images, footprints and a meals container on supply to lift funds for all of the animals underneath their care.
Additionally they held an public sale for the glory of sponsoring her birthday cake, which went for 100,000 baht ($3,065.)
A star child hippo
Moo Deng soared to stardom shortly after she was born, largely because of her keeper, Atthapon Nundee, who shared lovely footage and movies of the child hippo on social media. Atthapon retains Moo Deng’s followers up to date on enjoyable hippo moments — how she squirms as he tries to scrub her, bites him as he tries to play, or calmly closes her eyes as he rubs her stomach.
The identify Moo Deng, which accurately means “bouncy pork” in Thai, was chosen by followers through a ballot on social media. It matches the names of her different siblings: Moo Toon (stewed pork) and Moo Waan (candy pork). There may be additionally one other hippo on the zoo named Kha Moo (stewed pork leg).
Moo Deng’s first birthday was celebrated on the Khao Kheow Open Zoo on July 10, 2025 in Pattaya, Thailand.
Lauren DeCicca/Getty Photos
The zoo — which sits on 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres) of land and is residence to greater than 2,000 animals — noticed spikes of tourists since shortly after Moo Deng was born. However Narongwit mentioned the variety of guests has considerably dropped for the reason that top of Moo Deng’s fame. He mentioned the zoo has had about 2,000 guests throughout a weekday and round 5,000 throughout weekends over the previous few months — about half the numbers it noticed at its peak.
“Moo Deng is a representative of all wild animals, and she helps everyone understand the roles of zoos,” Narongwit informed The Related Press. “She speaks for all nearly extinct animals, and turns people’s attention to their conservation.”
What to find out about pygmy hippos
The zoo additionally runs breeding packages for a lot of endangered species, together with the pygmy hippopotamus. The species is native to West Africa, the place it’s threatened by poaching and lack of habitat. There are solely 2,000 to three,000 left within the wild. Pygmy hippos at the moment are discovered within the wild in solely 4 nations: Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, in response to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. The species is threatened by logging, farming and growing human growth.
Moo Deng, proven right here in 2024 simply a few months after her beginning, is seen together with her mom in an enclosure at Khao Kheow Open Zoo.
Carola Frentzen/image alliance through Getty Photos
Pygmy hippos are one in all simply two hippo species, in response to the African Wildlife Basis. The massive/widespread river hippo is the third-largest residing land mammal, after elephants and white rhinos. Pygmy hippos can develop to weigh greater than 600 kilos, whereas a river hippo could weigh as much as 10 occasions greater than a pygmy hippo, in response to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Apart from the scale distinction, the pygmy hippo can be much less aquatic than the widespread hippo, in response to the San Diego Zoo. Their toes are much less webbed, and so they even have only one pair of incisors, whereas the widespread hippo has two or three.
Pygmy hippos are largely nocturnal animals, in response to specialists. Their common life span ranges from 30 to 50 years.
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