Moo Deng, the toddler hippopotamus, is still a star

CHONBURI, Thailand – Moo Deng does not bounce like she did a couple of months ago.

But she still resembles a ripe avocado overstuffed with pate. She retains a moist sheen. She snuffles. She yawns. She naps.

She very occasionally sniffs her mother’s hindquarters, then recoils in a springy huff.

Mostly, Moo Deng ignores the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who have schlepped to an out-of-the-way zoo for one reason: her.

She is, somewhat unaccountably, Thailand’s most famous creature in forever, human or pachyderm.

Yet, when she is not in the pool, her eyes and nostrils peeking above the water, Moo Deng spends a lot of time snoozing in a secluded corner of her enclosure, sprawled like an abandoned sausage.

It is a lot for a six-month-old pygmy hippopotamus, this life of intense celebrity.

The visitors are mostly respectful, but

there are exceptions

, both foreign and Thai. There have been incidents of tossed bananas and of splashed water.

The daily annoyances are the shrieks and gasps and the chorus of “Moo Deng, Moo Deng” at every flick of her tail, every wiggle of her bristly jowls.

People have fainted in her presence, although Thailand’s sticky heat could have been a factor too.

Last week, Mr Hunter Hackett, a digital nomad from California, joined the Moo Deng receiving line with his wife Anisi Baigude, a children’s book illustrator.

“I used to scoff at these trends, but now I want to be in on the next big thing,” Mr Hackett said. “It reminds me of being young and innocent and being excited about, like, Pokemon.”

Moo deng is bouncy pork, a kind of Super Ball meatball. (Moo is Thai for “pig” or “pork”.)

Moo Deng’s siblings at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo, in central Thailand, include Moo Toon, or “braised pork”, and Moo Krob, or “crispy pork”.

A song

has been composed

in her honour. It is called Moodeng, Moodeng; and boasts a chorus that goes: “Moo Deng, Moo Deng, Deng Deng Deng Deng Deng.”

Mr Narongwit Chodchoy, director of the zoo, has quickly monetised the park’s star occupant.

He has arranged endorsement deals from an online marketplace and a telecoms company. Wire sculptures of hippos decorate the zoo entrance. There is Moo Deng ice cream and Moo Deng moo deng at the canteen.

Mr Narongwit said he knew why Moo Deng became a hit in Thailand.

The country has been locked in political drama for a couple of decades. Barely a month after Moo Deng’s arrival on July 10, a

Thai court ousted yet another prime minister

.

“When Moo Deng was born, people in Thailand were sick of politics, sick of the news, sick of society,” Mr Narongwit said. “She was a breath of fresh air.”

Expat Japanese executives living near the zoo sent home clips of Moo Deng being Moo Deng, which is to say being adorable.

Pretty soon, Moo Deng was all over TikTok. Saturday Night Live featured her. In September, during the US presidential campaign, she crushed presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in an online Tonight Show election poll.

Google graced her with a doodle, befitting one of the most searched terms of 2024.

In the last three months of 2024, the Khao Kheow Open Zoo trebled its number of visitors to nearly 600,000 people.

Like Paul the octopus, who predicted soccer match winners, Moo Deng was offered two fruit and vegetable platters emblazoned with the names of Mr Trump and Ms Harris.

She picked Mr Trump

.

Mr Narongwit said he personally preferred Mr Trump because of the newly inaugurated President’s business acumen and determination.

But he denied any fixing of the fruit baskets. And he is magnanimous about other recently born pygmy hippos, such as Poppy in Virginia and Haggis in Scotland.

The one person unsurprised by Moo Deng’s rock star reception is her keeper Atthapon Nundee.

He was the one posting Moo Deng videos on his TikTok and Facebook accounts, as well as on the zoo’s social media accounts.

He said he was intentional about building her online presence.

Already, her older brother Moo Toon had shown glimpses of online acclaim, including in an image of him chomping on Mr Atthapon’s leg.

A winsome herd of capybaras under Mr Atthapon’s care gained a following too.

And before that, the zookeeper debuted a two-toed sloth named Mr Flash, whose slow-moving antics occupied Thais during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Mr Flash didn’t do too much,” Mr Atthapon acknowledged. “He is a sloth.”

By the time hippos Jona and Tony produced Moo Deng, a 5kg blob about the size of a one-litre bottle of Coke, Mr Atthapon said he knew exactly what kind of hippo action the world craved.

He now has two million followers on TikTok and 400,000 on Facebook.

As for himself, he does not watch videos to relax, Mr Atthapon said.

“I’m too busy taking care of the animals,” he said.

Mr Atthapon, known by the nickname Benz, as in Mercedes, did not grow up dreaming of becoming a zookeeper.

He took care of small dogs – pomeranians, shih tzus, the occasional Chihuahua – when he was a boy, but he drove trucks for a living.

Eight years ago, he applied for a job at the zoo because his mother was a caddie at a nearby golf course. Instead of driving food delivery trucks for the animals, Mr Atthapon was told to tend to five types of animals, including two varieties of hippos: pygmy and common.

“They’re a lot larger than chihuahuas,” he said, even the pygmy variety, which can weigh about 225kg.

In 2024, Mr Atthapon was named one of Thailand’s most eligible bachelors by a local media group, but word has trickled out that he has a girlfriend.

The pygmy hippopotamus, or Choeropsis liberiensis, is endangered, with about 2,500 left in the wild in its native West Africa.

Captive breeding populations are small.

Poppy, the Virginian newborn, is Moo Deng’s cousin. Moo Deng’s half sister from her father’s side is also her mother’s granddaughter.

Last week, the Thai King’s sister presided over what was described as a wedding between Moo Manao, or “lime pork”, and Moo Toon.

Buddhist monks blessed the couple. They are expected to mate in mid-February, a ritual that tends to take place underwater.

For a country that has long tied itself to the elephant – which adorned Thailand’s flag when it was known as Siam – there is a new pachyderm in town.

Animal-rights groups have denounced some captive breeding programmes as good for zoos, but not for the future of an endangered species.

The Khao Kheow Open Zoo, despite its sprawling grounds, features some dilapidated exhibits. The penguins look dispirited, the lemurs dejected. A flock of yellow-billed storks, native to Africa, stalk the grounds.

Most of the recent visitors do not linger with the other animals.

Moo Deng is what lured them here

, to a zoo more than two hours from Bangkok.

Ms Dasha Scsherbina, a manicurist who was on a four-day Thai holiday from Chelyabinsk, Russia, admitted that she had never heard of Moo Deng before her Thai guide suggested they make a pilgrimage to the zoo. But, she said, she now understood the hype.

Below her, in a shaded corner, Moo Deng dozed. Not an ounce of fat rippled. Her zoomies were done for the day.

A Thai woman remarked to another that Moo Deng was about as active as a pile of buffalo poop.

In the crowd, people spoke English, Russian, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese and Thai, all united, for a few minutes, by the charms of a sleeping baby hippo. NYTIMES