Meet Moo Deng, the adorable baby hippo everyone is falling for

Only a period aft Thailand’s adorable babe hippo Moo Deng was unveiled connected Facebook, her fame became unstoppable.

Fans incapable to marque the two-hour thrust to Khao Kheow Open Zoo from the Thai superior Bangkok to spot her successful idiosyncratic tin ticker her video clips online, oregon simply scroll done societal media to savor meme aft meme.

Zookeeper Atthapon Nundee has been posting cute moments of the animals successful his attraction for astir 5 years. He ne'er imagined the zoo’s newborn pygmy hippo would go an net megastar wrong weeks.

Cars started lining up extracurricular the zoo good earlier it opened Thursday. Visitors traveled from adjacent and acold for a accidental to spot the pudgy, expressive 2-month-old successful idiosyncratic astatine the zoo astir 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Bangkok. The pit wherever Moo Deng lives with her mom, Jona, was packed astir immediately, with radical cooing and cheering each clip the pink-cheeked babe carnal made skittish movements.

“It was beyond expectation,” Atthapon told The Associated Press. “I wanted radical to cognize her. I wanted a batch of radical to sojourn her, oregon ticker her online, oregon permission amusive comments. I ne'er would’ve thought (of this).”

Moo Deng, which virtually means “bouncy pork” successful Thai, is simply a benignant of meatball. The sanction was chosen by fans via a canvass connected societal media, and it matches her different siblings: Moo Toon (stewed pork) and Moo Waan (sweet pork). There is besides a communal hippo astatine the zoo named Kha Moo (stewed pork leg).

“She’s specified a small lump. I privation to shot her up and swallow her whole!” said Moo Deng instrumentality Areeya Sripanya portion visiting the zoo Thursday.

Artists person drawn cartoons, cakes and latte creation based connected her, and societal media level X adjacent featured her successful its authoritative account’s post.

Her representation adorns memes by German shot squad FC Bayern, American hoops squad Phoenix Suns, and American shot squad Washington Commanders, arsenic good arsenic the New York Mets. Simple photograph manipulation puts her successful a assortment of headgear oregon human-like situations.

Businesses, too, person utilized her image. Sephora Thailand has a constitution extremity — “wear your blush similar a babe hippo” — highlighting her pinkish cheeks, portion nutrient transportation app Grab Thailand imagined with photos what benignant of repast she could garnish.

With each that fame, zoo manager Narongwit Chodchoi said they person begun copyrighting and trademarking “Moo Deng the hippo” to forestall the carnal from being commercialized by anyone else. “After we bash this, we volition person much income to enactment activities that volition marque the animals’ lives better,” helium said.

The zoo sits connected 800 hectares (almost 2,000 acres) of onshore and is location to much than 2,000 animals. It runs breeder programs for galore endangered taxon similar Moo Deng’s. The pygmy hippopotamus that’s autochthonal to West Africa is threatened by poaching and nonaccomplishment of habitat. There are lone 2,000-3,000 of them near successful the wild.

To assistance money the initiative, the zoo is making Moo Deng shirts and pants that volition beryllium acceptable for merchantability astatine the extremity of the month, with much merchandise to come.

Narongwit believes a origin of Moo Deng’s fame is her name, which compliments her energetic and chaotic property captured successful Atthapon’s originative captions and video clips.

Appropriately, Moo Deng likes to “deng,” oregon bounce, and Atthapon has galore moments of her giddy bouncing connected societal media. Even erstwhile she’s not bouncing, the hippo is endlessly cute — squirming arsenic Atthapon tries to lavation her, biting him portion helium was trying to play with her, calmly closing her eyes arsenic helium rubs her pinkish cheeks oregon her chubby belly.

Atthapon, who has worked astatine the zoo for 8 years taking attraction of hippos, sloths, capybaras and binturongs, said babe hippos are usually much playful and energetic, and they go calmer arsenic they get older.

The zoo saw a spike successful visitors since Moo Deng’s fame — truthful overmuch that the zoo present has to bounds nationalist entree to the baby’s enclosure to 5-minute windows passim the time during weekends.

Narongwit said the zoo has been receiving implicit 4,000 visitors during a weekday, up from astir conscionable 800 people, and much than 10,000 during a weekend, up from astir 3,000 people.

But the fame has besides brought immoderate assertive visitors to Moo Deng, who lone wakes up acceptable to play astir 2 hours a day. Some videos showed visitors splashing h2o oregon throwing things astatine the sleeping Moo Deng to effort to aftermath her up. The hippo pit present has a informing motion against throwing things astatine Moo Deng, posted prominently astatine the beforehand successful Thai, English and Chinese.

Narongwit said the zoo would instrumentality enactment nether the carnal extortion instrumentality if radical mistreat the animal. But clips emerged of radical treating Moo Deng poorly, and the backlash was fierce. The zoo manager said that since then, they haven’t seen anyone doing it again.

For fans who can’t marque the travel oregon are discouraged aft seeing the crowds for Moo Deng, the Khao Kheow Open Zoo acceptable up cameras and program to commencement a 24-hour unrecorded provender of the babe hippo successful the coming week.