- Moo Deng, a baby pygmy hippo, became an overnight sensation online. Videos of her were watched by millions.
- But conservationists say that popularity hasn’t resulted in any change on the ground for wild pygmy hippos, which are down to fewer than 2,500 animals in the wild.
- The Khao Kheow Open Zoo, where Moo Deng is housed, says it is working on a partnership with a conservation group to support research in the wild.
2024 was a chaotic year. The year was, once again, the warmest on record globally, according to the World Meteorological Organization, with multiple climate disasters around the globe. The year was also the third since Russia had invaded Ukraine, it saw 12 months of bombing in Gaza by Israel and 10 million were displaced in Sudan due to war. The year also saw hugely important elections in many nations, including Indonesia, France, India, the U.K. and the U.S. Is it any wonder that millions of people turned to a pugnacious baby pygmy hippo for a little relief?
Moo Deng was born July 10, 2024, at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Bang Phra, Thailand. In September, the baby went viral, becoming famous for her playful, no-holds-barred attitude. She appears to enjoy mouthing the boots of her keeper, chasing water from a hose and, of course, like all babies, sleeping. And, yes, she’s even cute when she does that. Moo Deng became such a phenomenon that zoo attendance doubled and the Khao Kheow Open Zoo has said they plan to copyright her cute image. The phenomenon was international: She even appeared in a Saturday Night Live skit in the U.S. and got her own theme song in Thai. The Moo Deng story hasn’t been without some controversy, but in a chaotic year it was largely a wholesome treat for world-weary viewers.
But there is another side to this story. After all, Moo Deng is a pygmy hippo (Choeropsis liberiensis), an endangered species with fewer than 2,500 surviving in the world (in other words, there are 3.5 million people in the world for every single pygmy hippo left). The species is currently decreasing and in very real danger of disappearing altogether. Only a few conservation groups are working directly with the pygmy hippo. So, that begs the question: Has the Moo Deng phenomenon helped wild pygmy hippos at all? Has it increased awareness? Or, far more importantly, has it increased funding for wild pygmy hippos?
“Not yet,” says Elie Bogui, a coordinator for the Taï Hippo Project in Côte d’Ivoire. The project, a partnership of the Swiss Center for Scientific Research and the Institute for Breeding Rare and Endangered African Mammals (IBREAM), involves research and monitoring the pygmy hippos in Taï National Park in the West African country as well as working with local communities.
“Pygmy hippos are not very popular,” says Neus Estela, a technical specialist with Fauna and Flora International (FFI) in Liberia. FFI works with pygmy hippos across six parks or proposed protected areas in Liberia and Guinea by aiding the government in managing the ecosystems and monitoring pygmy hippo populations among other species. Given that Liberia likely has the largest populations of pygmy hippos in the world, FFI’s work covers more pygmy hippos than any other group.
Yet, Estela says, due to their lack-of-popularity globally, pygmy hippos don’t receive targeted funding, unlike elephants, chimpanzees and pangolins in the region, but instead “benefit more from general conservation efforts.”
Bogui and Estela say the same thing: They have seen no material funding or support, as yet, from the Moo Deng phenomenon, highlighting how fame for an individual animal in our Meme Age doesn’t necessarily mean aid for its species.
However, Khao Kheow Open Zoo says it is putting together a plan to help wild pygmy hippos. Wanlaya Tipkantha, the head of the zoo’s Animal Health, Research and Conservation Institute, says the team is currently working with IBREAM to develop a partnership to “promote and support” the Taï Hippo Project on the ground. They hope to help the group purchase GPS collars that could track the movements of wild pygmy hippos for the first time.
Tipkantha says they will share “details” once an agreement is reached.
“Animals in zoos and aquariums can act as ambassadors for their counterparts in the wild,” says the CEO of The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), Martín Zordan, adding, “by housing them in zoos, we have the opportunity to raise awareness about the species’ struggles in the wild while also offering visitors a chance to connect with the hippos.”
Wild pygmy hippo plight
The pygmy hippo is the only other surviving species in the Hippopotamidae family aside from the much better known common hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius). Unlike its big, impossible-to-miss relative, the pygmy hippo lives a reclusive life deep in the rainforest.
Another population of pygmy hippo, potentially comprising a distinct subspecies — Heslop’s pygmy hippo (C. liberiensis heslopi) — used to inhabit the Nigerian Delta, but it has not been seen since the 1940s and many believe it extinct. Our planet used to contain numerous other species of small hippos on Mediterranean islands, such as Sicily and Crete, before humans likely hunted them to extinction.
While the IUCN estimates fewer than 2,500 individual pygmy hippos remain in the wild, Estela says this number may be wrong.
“These statistics are very simple,” she says. “We don’t really know.”
Across the pygmy hippo’s full range, deforestation is the biggest concern. According to the IUCN, remaining forests are often fragmented, isolating hippos and leading to less gene flow.
“There is now very little, if any, undisturbed forest in the region safe for wildlife,” reads the IUCN Red List status. Forests are falling for agriculture and mining.
In Taï National Park, Bogui says the biggest threat is illegal gold mining inside the park, which is destroying forests and polluting waterways.
Estela says they have also “confirmed high levels of mercury” in Sapo National Park’s waterways — the only national park so far in Liberia — due to gold mining.
Poaching is another problem, but Estela says it’s largely opportunistic, as pygmy hippos are hard to hunt given their nocturnal lifestyle and low density. However, snaring remains a concern.
Given how few people are working on this species, Gabriella Flacke, a veterinarian with the IUCN SSC Hippo Specialist Group, says one “major threat” to the species is the lack of “financial and logistical resources (manpower, infrastructure, supplies) to provide appropriate protection for the minimal remaining tracts of protected habitats … throughout [the pygmy hippo’s] range.”
She adds that “burgeoning local human populations are another threat, in that this leads to habitat loss.”
Raising awareness
Zordan, the CEO of WAZA, says the group has not analyzed the impact of the Moo Deng phenomenon, but “we do know that moments like these, where people form connections with individual animals, can have a profound effect on raising awareness.”
But has it actually raised awareness, or are people just watching cute animal videos without learning a thing? Anecdotally, the sudden popularity of Moo Deng has seemed to raise some awareness among the public — if only of the species’ existence in the first place.
“The only thing it seems to have done is to generally make more people aware that pygmy hippos actually exist (most people don’t, or didn’t, know that there are two types of hippos),” Flacke says.
Estela agrees, saying she doesn’t think most people know where pygmy hippos live, even if they have enjoyed Moo Deng videos. But FFI says it has received an uptick in the number of visitors at its pygmy hippo page.
Even Tipkantha says the zoo hasn’t seen rising awareness “for now.” But the zoo is planning “to monitor the public awareness” after it announces its partnership with the Taï Hippo Project.
Flacke says Moo Deng has led several media outlets to do interviews with her in which she attempted to “highlight the plight of the species.” But, she says, “I don’t think the average citizen is more concerned or more involved in conservation efforts as the result of Moo Deng.”
Should zoos have some responsibility for wild conservation?
All this raises the question: How responsible should zoos be for conservation of wild species? It’s a debate that’s been ongoing for decades, but increasingly zoos are putting money into conservation projects in the wild. That said, Moo Deng is a distinct phenomenon; most zoo animals don’t garner such a rapid and intense following or one that has brought such sudden success, and spotlight, to the zoo.
“Our member zoos are expected to make meaningful contributions to conservation of wild species and wild places as outlined in our conservation strategy,” says WAZA CEO Zordan.
WAZA is a global organization that sets standards for member zoos and aquariums, including around animal welfare and conservation, both in captivity and supporting outside conservation projects. Khao Kheow Open Zoo is a member of WAZA.
Zordan says members have recently agreed on a new resolution in line with the Convention on Biological Diversity aimed at “actively and increasingly contributing to halting extinctions, reversing declines, restoring populations and securing a future for threatened species as well as reporting on these.”
It’s been just over six months since Moo Deng was born — and no one expects a miracle overnight. But if Moo Deng’s global and stunning popularity can go some way toward aiding her brethren in the wild, it would be a major win for a long-neglected species. The question is: Will it happen?
Banner image: In September, Moo Deng went viral, becoming famous for her playful, no-holds-barred attitude. Image courtesy of Taï Hippo Project.
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