Child pygmy hippo Moo Deng eats fruit introduced for her first birthday celebration on the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi province, Thailand, Thursday.
Sakchai Lalit/AP
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Sakchai Lalit/AP
CHONBURI, Thailand — 1000’s of excited followers flocked to a Thai zoo on Thursday to have a good time the primary birthday of Moo Deng, the cute child pygmy hippo that has grow to be 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 Kids underneath 12 years outdated can enter the zoo, a few two hour drive from the capital Bangkok, without spending a dime all through the extravaganza.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.
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,” mentioned Swindall, “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 holiday makers calling out for her consideration, Moo Deng appeared peaceable as she took a dip in a pond in her enclosure.
Moo Deng eats fruit introduced for her first birthday celebration on the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi province, Thailand, on Thursday.
Sakchai Lalit/AP
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Sakchai Lalit/AP
Followers photographed the child hippo with their cameras or cell telephones and sang “Happy birthday” as her birthday cake, product of quite a lot of fruit and veggies, was positioned close to the pond.
“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 photos.
“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.”
Moo Deng (proper) with mom Jona eats fruit introduced for her first birthday celebration on the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi province, Thailand on Thursday.
Sakchai Lalit/AP
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Sakchai Lalit/AP
The zoo held on-line auctions to have a good time Moo Deng’s birthday, with pictures, footprints and a meals container on provide to lift funds for all of the animals underneath their care.
Additionally they held an public sale for the respect 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 due to her keeper Atthapon Nundee who shared cute photos 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 clean 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).
The zoo — which sits on 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres) of land and is house to greater than 2,000 animals — noticed spikes of holiday makers since shortly after Moo Deng was born. However Narongwit mentioned the variety of guests has considerably dropped because the 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 advised The Related Press. “She speaks for all nearly extinct animals, and turns people’s attention to their conservation.”
The zoo additionally runs breeder 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.
