Moo-Deng the Baby Hippo

About

Moo-Deng the Baby Hippo refers to a female pygmy hippopotamus named Moo Deng who was born at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand in July 2024 and went viral online in September of that year. Moo Deng's photographs and videos, particularly an image in which she is being sprayed from a water hose while looking mortified, inspired fan art and memes on social media.

Origin

On July 10th, 2024, a female pygmy hippo was born at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. On July 25th, the first photograph of the hippo was revealed on the zoo's official Instagram^[1] page, where it received over 1,000 likes in two months (shown below). On August 10th, 2024, the name of the baby hippo was revealed,^[2] Moo-Deng (Thai. หมูเด้ง), literally translating to "bouncing pork" and meaning a soup-like dish made from ground pork.

In August and July 2024, Khao Kheow Open Zoo's official social media accounts shared multiple photographs and videos of the hippopotamus together with her mother Jonah. Notably, on August 26th, 2024, the official X^[3] / Twitter account for the zoo posted a photograph of Moo-Deng being lifted up by her caretaker as she looks like she's screaming in terror (shown below). The post received over 4.6 million views, 18,000 reposts and 15,000 likes in two weeks.

On September 5th, 2024, X^[4] artist @saart_tanis posted the earliest discovered fan art of Moo Deng, a sketch based on the photograph that garnered over 44,000 reposts and 348,000 likes in five days (shown below).

Spread

Starting on September 5th, 2024 multiple users on X / Twitter posted fan art based on photographs of Moo-Deng, most notably on an image of the baby hippo being sprayed by water from a hose (shown below).

On September 5th, X^[5] user @glittering_grim posted a fan art of the baby hippopotamus that received over 63,000 reposts and 306,000 likes in five days (shown below).

On September 6th, 2024, X^[6] user @DewEnjoyer made the earliest viral post about the hippo in the English language, which received over 41,000 reposts and 325,000 likes in four days.

Multiple artworks of Moo-Deng went viral on X / Twitter in early September 2024. For example, on September 9th, 2024, X^[7] user @e_urhrh posted a fan art of Moo-Deng that garnered over 17,000 reposts and 136,000 likes in one day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References