moo deng and the plight of the viral zoo animal

grass a day. She is beauty, she is rage. There's nothing controversial about Moodang. What could possibly be controversial about Moodang?

it'll get extremely dark. And I will also be speaking with zoologist Oliver aka Doctor Wildlife to expand on what zooelebrity means on today's social media. And to be clear, may be clear, I'm not talking about viral pets here.

You're grumpy cats, your doges, your noodle, the pugs. Individual ownership versus zoo ownership is a completely different discussion as far as I'm concerned, which is just to say, by all means, send me some requests on what viral pets you'd want to see discussed on the show.

but as far as we know, that's about it. And Mudang immediately became the most popular pigmy hippo in the world this past summer while living at a for profit zoo in Thailand, and weirdly enough, saying you're the most famous pygmy hippo is actually saying something. A pigmy hippo in Berlin named Tony went viral earlier last summer. But Tony just did didn't have the stang power and that

showbiz babe, I don't know what to tell you. Moodang was born on July tenth, twenty twenty four, to mother Jonah, age twenty five and father Tony age twenty four, age gap in Siracha Kunbury, Thailand, at the aforementioned kaw Kio Open Zoo, and right away she had a whole pack of full and half pigmy hippo siblings Nadette, moutun Co, Kanya,

Falo and Muwan. And from the moment she was born, the direction of Moodang's life was decided by the general public, to the extent that her name was voted on by regular zoo attendees. The options given by the zoo online were Moodang, which roughly translates to bouncy pork, mood dange or dae nnge red pork, or moosap which means minced pork. The public chose correctly and overwhelmingly, and Moodang got her name by jury at over twenty thousand votes. And is

the name nice? I mean, I wouldn't love a name that was just a physical descriptor of my infancy. But it does make sense if I was named after what I looked like as a baby, they would be like meet Bald and Afraid Loftus. Moodang's course to fame is a little nonlinear. There's no exact post that can take full credit for her rise to prominence, but the naming poll does seem to be a big part of it.

Some of the early posts that got the baby hippo attention nationally in Thailand were engineered by her zoo keeper, a man named Athapon Nundi, who regularly posted the cute animals he worked with to social media for five years. Then a Bangkok based seramicist named Yami Saracino, who saw one of Nundi's posts, translated the Moodang naming poll, and the story begins to creep westward. And I think it's worth mentioning that Moodang was TikTok algorithm crack from moment one.

An early successful posts can be traced to an account that exclusively posted Thai hippo content and had over two million followers, because of course it did, but it didn't start there. Moodang became a sensation on a smaller scale, first on the zoo's Facebook, where she stood out from the crowd as the most playful, chubbiest of the hippo siblings, going nuts for the hose and getting a lot of attention. The kau Kio Open Zoo was very online prior to

Moudang and regularly posted to Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. This is a very normal thing for zoos to do in the modern age to encourage and maintain attendance. The earliest post I can find about Moodang is two weeks after her birth on the zoo's instagram on July twent when the new hippo's birth was announced, leading with a picture of Moodang herself.

an online sensation, because it couldn't be more obvious. She's fucking adorable. She's extremely expressive, and she seems to either be sleeping or screaming at all times. She was like born to be memed because she's immediately popular and immediately

causes controversy. The Kalkio opened zoo director, a man named narongwit chad Choi, said that attendance doubled at the zoo in the weeks after her birth announcement and subsequent meaning contest, and that dangerous behavior from guests had escalated along with it. Before long, the zoo had to install security cameras and limit visiting hours to combat visitor behavior towards Moudang, which was said to include throwing things and spraying Moudang with

water to get her to wake up for pictures. And keep in mind, baby hippos are only generally awake and playing for about two hours a day, and of course Moudang is exhibited far more than that. And all this happened before she became a global sensation on TikTok in early September twenty twenty four, when Moodang memes started to take over all of social media on TikTok, on Twitter,

on Instagram and it kept escalating from there. Hyperallergic writer Issa Fharfan broke down the rapid uptick of Moodang from the if you know you know animal meme to a full blown corporatized image, and this happens in the course of a couple weeks. The first week of September mainly consisted of Moodang memes. The zoo had already had an optic in attendance and was promising an impending merch line.

But as we just said, they weren't prepared for the amount of attention that the baby hippo had generated, and it took a little while to get their ducks or whatever endangered specie you want to replace ducks with in this metaphor in a row. But for my money, the Moodang memes kind of returned to this older style of meme format, one of those if you can't handle me at my blank, you don't deserve me at my blank kind of stuff. One of the most popular was from

a user on Twitter called at Something's underscore awry. It says the rewards of being loved next to a picture of a peaceful baby Moodang who's smiling, then the mortifying ordeal of being known next to a picture of a blurry, screaming Moodang. I know you know the picture I'm talking about.

of weirdolls threatening to eat them. Twitter user big content Guy says.

they had to get ahead of some things. On September nineteenth, ap News reported that the kau Kio Open Zoo was in the process of copywriting Mudang's likeness and the phrase Moodang the Hippo. That same director, narongwit Chad Choi, said.

Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the podcast where we don't want to eat a baby hippo. Oh my god, we're talking about MoU Dang and two important things happened to our sweet girl at the end of September. Well, actually probably three. I'm assuming she was also hosed down. First, a twenty four hour live stream of Moodang is launched and hasn't stopped since. I have it on right now.

And the live stream is a classic viral zoo tactic that first became popular in the two thousand and Most famously, the two month old baby Hippo hit the American mainstream hard when Bo and Yang appeared as Moodang on SNL just a couple of weeks ago.

to kill her. But that, however, clunkily is the comparison that this sketch is obviously making. Chapel and Moudang both got famous out of nowhere over the summer, to the point where lifestyle adjustments had to be made to protect both of them. Not for nothing. She is also the most high profile pop star to be actively advocating for transwrites and Palestine. But I digress. The comparison being made here is clear and Bowen Yang screaming for a hose every three seconds is delightful.

just cannot get over how bad it is. Let's keep going. I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of zoo's and I understand that I'm still probably in the minority there. And even this is a pretty new thing for me, something I learned around five years ago after you guessed it, going to the National Zoo in DC and doing some research.

But I want to introduce you to the basics as to why I feel that way, because that does tie into the controversy that surrounds Moodang, the fact that she's not only an animal celebrity, but a zoo animal celebrity.

There are cases to be made for zoos, provided that they are carefully regulated and that the appropriate professionals are hired and retained to make sure decisions are always made in the interest of the animals, not the interest of profit, because when profit is prioritized, people and animals get hurt. Look no further than public attractions like SeaWorld for what a severe animal and human cost Neglecting the interest of

animals can result in. I'm, of course referring to Tillicum the orca, the captive animal who was involved in the death of three trainers famously covered in the twenty thirteen documentary Blackfish and Orcas are not naturally aggressive towards humans. This was largely thought to be a result of the unnatural circumstances and being forced to perform, as well as

gross animal negligence on SeaWorld's part. More recently, there was the Tiger King saga, in which a now imprisoned Joe Exotic was found to be guilty of both animal abuse and exhibiting endangered species without a license or oversight. And these are just mainstream examples. They're the tip of the iceberg, but both have led to increased public demand for better regulation and a little bit of skepticism around exhibiting animals

in general. If run well, zoos can help conserve endangered species while maintaining proper habitats for them, and can educate the human public on the importance of conservation.

endangered species. Activists feel that zoos are for profit breeding projects, with criticisms ranging from limited space to unnatural environment for a certain species, to outright mistreatment, whether that's physical abuse from trainers or harmful familial separation to maximize profits for

the zoos themselves. And there's plenty of history even as animal protection laws develop, of zoos being poorly regulated, which, given their history and connection to things like circuses or private unethical animal collections like Joe Exotics, makes a lot

of sense depending on the animal. Most advocate to leave the animals in the wild or if their environment has been compromised by humans, in a sanctuary where specialists can provide the animals with good care, where they'll never you know, have stuff thrown at them to make them wake up for a TikTok.

display perpetuates their suffering. Peta calls for an end to this cruel cycle and on zoos to prioritize conservation efforts that protect animals in nature where they truly belong.

conserve the two thousand animals they have on display. I think PETA's concerns here are well placed, but there has been some dispute as to whether this point of view is globally applicable or if this is putting a more Western view on a zoo with different practices. And Peta is no stranger to scandals themselves, including inordinately high euthanasia

rates of pets who enter their shelters. And what's more, Heata's narrative has been refuted by a different animal rights group, the Thai Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This comes from Thai news outlet Niona Pologies for pronunciation or the Frontline.

be on display for profit might not be ethical. It's a really complicated issue, but for the moment, there's no doubt that Moodang will remain at the zoo until further notice, and that at the very least the zoo has been responsive to changing things in order to ensure her comfort, all while keeping her and her family on display. And finally, it wouldn't be a mid twenty twenties press circuit without an irrational New York Post attempt to cancel a baby hippo.

In twenty seventeen, there was March, There was a bespoke ice cream flavor, and this was all said to be created in order to sustain the animal conservation efforts on site. When Fiona became a star, the Zoo's Facebook following more than doubled. And if this isn't and if this is any indication of things to come, Fiona's popularity has held strong after she was no longer a tiping little hippo. So it's very likely that Moudanng will be here to

stay too. So I know how I feel about zoos, and I know that how I feel isn't going to shut it down. It's wonderful that there are meaningful conservation efforts being done with the money that zoo business generates, but I don't know that that's a fair way to justify the whole operation without examining whether it's actually healthy for the animals to be visually exploited for humans in order to preserve a species that is dying because of humans. This is a story we see again and again, going

back to the pre Internet days. I'm no expert, so I turn to one and when we come back, we talk about the ethics of the Moodng phenomenon with zoologist Oliver aka Doctor Wildlife. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm currently embroiled in some serious snoopy drama.

Brown donald Trump's hand. Fuck You Snoopy Weekly. If the story sticks around, maybe I'll cover it, But for the moment, I'm actually really busy this week fighting in the trenches on behalf of Daily Snoopies Fuck Snoopy Weekly, and this week we are getting to the bottom of one of this election year's most successful viral stars. The kaw Qio

opened Zoos Pigmy Hippo, Baby Diva Moo Dang. To understand Moodang's moment, I wanted to speak with someone who has studied zoology and was open to the argument against zoos, and most importantly, someone who understands the major appeal of viral zoo animals. So here's my chat with Oliver aka Doctor Wildlife, a zoologist working in Toronto Enjoy.

to say, like, what haven't I worked with? But I've worked with things from really tiny pigmy marmosets, African elephants, nile crocodiles, so many different birds, and pretty much everything in between. My research and largely what my degrees were focused on, though, was with tigers, specifically their behavior and conservation. But out of all of that, I would say my biggest passion is science communication.

but it's very interested in being a vet. I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas, of all places, I was around animals a lot, whether wild or the animals on our farm. So I had a keen interest, and I decided that I wanted to be a zoo veterinarians, so someone that specialized in zoo and aquarium work, and to get in the vet school of any kind, it's it's way harder than just med school surprisingly to get into, especially if you're wanting to

be a zuova. Everybody wants to work with the lions and tigers, and so I was like, I'm going to do a lot of internships to make myself stand out. And it wasn't until I started interning with tigers that I feel like the whole trajectory of my life changed.

I think it's all one crazy mixture because the zoo aquarium world is surprisingly complicated. There's a lot of different aspects to it. When it comes to people who don't find them ethical, there is a difference between people that believe that because of their own personal morals, just personal compass of not wanting to see animals contained, and then there's kind of a combo of people who see them as unethical because they don't think there's welfare standards or

any of that. And that's largely what I focus on helping people understand that the modern zoo and aquarium is very different than the zoos and aquariums of the past. That being said, not every zoo or aquarium is up to the same standards. But overall, there's crediting boards these days that take accreditation very seriously. They have inspections, random inspections.

There's a lot of regulatory boards. There's so many zoos and aquariums to this day and age that provide such amazing care that I mean, I visit some places and when I see their habitats, I can easily be reduced to tears because I'm like, Okay, this is how you do a zoo habitat right, this is how you do an aquarium habitat right. Overall, I do agree that there are unethical places out there, but by and large, I don't think the field itself is, especially with modern technology

and standards that I'm into play. We're always learning, I guess, is the best way to put it.

the world they're in. But also, I mean, you know, I say that there's a lot of nonprofit zoos, aquariums, sanctuaries in the United States that aren't accredited, don't meet standards at all, but they're nonprofit. So I guess yeah, And I guess the best way to answer your question is actually a terrible way to answer it, with it being just it really depends, because there's the whole world is just incredibly complex, and that world being Susan aquariums.

I have actually worked at a for profit facility before that is accredited, that provides great standards. It feels like it's kind of when you walk in there, it's like a living rainforest rather than what most people picture a zoo beinge which is small cages or things like that.

I mean, really no place is like that anymore. But you know, and it's for profit, and I've always joked that it kind of felt like I like I was working at Jurassic Park because because of the for profit nature and such, it felt like there was a lot more spending available for buying things, to the point that every plant in every habitat was an authentic plant species from the animal's habitat, you know, bought from greenhouses, of course,

but they were all living. There was no fake plan, and that was because we had the funding to be able to do it. Of course, for profit doesn't always mean that level. It could mean bad things too, so you really have to kind of look at every little aspect.

learn about animals in a hands on way. What is the best way for the average person to make sure that where they're going and what they're choosing is an ethical option.

That being said, AZA is not necessarily you know, not all good facilities are AZA accredited, and not every facility that's AZA accredited may meet what I would personally say is like my personal standard of a place that I would personally go to. But it's a good starting point. You can look at it and you can be like, Okay, well, I at least know that they're meeting standards on top of what government regulations are, which are minimal, and then

AZA step up. It's things like, you know, they have to meet certain vet standards, they have to have certain types of vet care and nutrition enrichment for animals. All the extra stuff the government regulations don't really look into. Good starting point. Another place to kind of look into is seeing how they interact with their animals all the time. If a place is allowing interaction between the public and big cats, that's a big no no. It sounds silly

to say. Okay, on one hands, you have these like prestigious zoos, and on the other hand you have higer king type places. The scary part is all the places in between where sometimes you can't really tell. So it's looking for if it's easy a and then kind of looking into how do the keepers interact with the animals there, and how does the public interact. That's not to say that any place as public interaction is automatically bad. It's more about what frequency they do it, what species that's

involved with what you're allowed to do. It does require a bit of research, but if someone wants to do the nice and easy route, we all have busy lives, right so aza go on there. You can use the find one near you search and easily find something that meets higher standards.

and retweets. And sometimes they would just tweet something with like short silly things, and you know, old fashioned educators or zoologists may look at that and be like, well, what is this doing? Well, okay, you tell me how. You know it's so excited about a sea urchin, right, Like, how are you gonna get someone to care about those animals? So I think scientists, zoologists, I'll you know, whatever title they hold, you started using the Internet in very interesting ways.

Of course, twitch is a whole other side of that, right, not being afraid to get on there and be silly, play games that are educational or maybe even just a fraction educational, but talking about animals while doing it. I keep saying it's the year of science on Twitter and Twitch.

like god Zilla destroying a city. And one of my friends sent it to me and they're like, is this a real behavior that hippos have as a joke? And I was like, yeah, trust me, I'm a zoo oda just that's exactly what happens. And then from that moment onward, I just feel like the hippo is taken over every everybody's brain. And you see all these edits on TikTok and such. Yeah, and my first thought, of course, is well,

I'm very easily entertained. I'm a very simple person, and I love anything with that baby hippo right now, just like all of us. I guess I try not to be cynical what is the viral animal at first? But in the day and age of where there's all these social media accounts that just pump out content regardless of what the background is and such. If something doesn't have

context behind it, I'm always a little skeptical at first. Usually, and I see just an animal video going viral, my first concern is like, Okay, well, where is this from, what's the story behind it, I'll do a little bit of research. Not everybody does that. That's why I'm a big proponent of if you're posting animal content, at least give some sort of background info. Right now, I don't think there needs to be background info because everybody knows this hippo. Everybody knows who this hippo is.

Bob the Elephant goes viral. You could post something and a million times of that elephant and it doesn't go anywhere. It's like two likes, and then you just happened to tweet the right video and caption combo and it has to be you know, it's filmed in just the correct way or cut in the correct way, and you wake up and you have thousands of likes, and then from

there it just grows and grows. And this is something you know, I know it didn't take exactly just one day for her to become like this, but in reality, it is kind of like the blink of an eye.

You don't really have time to prepare. So I feel like the best way for zoo keepers or anybody in animal care that's that's listening to this and curious, or just people curious in general, I think the best way is to just learn from all these situations and really yourself, or at least have someone on your team or at the zoo that immerses themselves in social media. And I'm not talking about just someone that's familiar with how to do social media or marketing, and I'm talking about be

immersed in internet culture. Unfortunately, I make a little sad sound as I say that, this unfortunately means being familiar with memes and understanding how things go viral, and I think from that you can kind of prepare yourself as best as you can. It's unfortunate that there really is no tried and true way to protect against things, because it's like, who would have expected that people would go somewhere and grow things to try and get the animal's attention.

People that do those things too, it's not always malicious. It's people that just don't think about their actions and the impact it has on animals. They just want to be entertained, and that's right.

that way. But what I guess I'm saying is she doesn't have this magical spell on her or this special quality that just makes her like the only baby hippo in the entire world that can be famous. And we know, of course from Fiona that's it's already not true. But I guess what I'm saying as this sounds mean, But what I mean is your animals. You know, if you're

a zoo keeper listening to this. Your animals are just as important, They're just as awesome, And all it takes is kind of the right way of communicating about them, the white right way of talking to guests about them to make them get the same level of attention. And I think it's really important for animals to get this

level of attention. So many animals that aren't fortunate enough to be as charismatic as say a tiger or a giant pandas that doesn't mean that they're less worthy of being conserved or cared for or having attention on them. And it doesn't mean that your friendly little tarantla that you work with at an aquarium will never get the level of virality as this hippo has. All it means is you may need to change how you're talking about

them to get this attention. I'm not saying everybody should strive to be just as viral, as we've already talked about, it can be a negative thing. It brings a lot of awareness, and I just wanted to mention that, you know, one of my favorite projects that I've had the opportunity of reading and viewing and even meeting the creator up was photo Arc by Joel Satori, and I made me

mispronouncing his name ever so slightly if so. Apologies, but Joel created photo Arc as a way to inspire people to help save at risk species before it's too late. In what photo Arc is is just what it sounds like. He is working towards photographing every animal under human care anywhere in the world, and he does so through these amazing what you would call like intimate portraits where it's I jokingly told somebody the other day, it's like the animal got taken to J. C. Penny and got put

in front of that's dating myself, I guess. But some of those photos that he takes are the last chance these animals have to get attention before they unfortunately go extinct. And you know, this is an extreme example, but there was a frog species, very cute one though some people may argue not cute, called a Rabs fringe limb tree frog, and these guys went extinct in Panama due to a fungus that was spread by human activity that's decimated amphibian populations.

And this Rab's fringeland tree frog actually went completely extinct in Panama. And there was only one individual left, and Joel took a lot of amazing photos of this animal, and a few of years later that animal passed away. And now that animals, that species is gone. It's just gone. And this is an extreme example. But pygmy hippo, who really thought about them before? Right? Who thought about this species? And if it wasn't for her, who would have known

they even existed. Same thing with so many countless other species and a lot of people. You know, this goes to general public, but also the zoo keepers listening. The world's a very scary place right now for a lot of reasons. The environment. I mean, we have a giant hurricane coming and temperatures and all these climate crisis is environmental issues and coaching and such. It's hard not to get negative. It's hard not to be pestimistic and be like, well,

this is it. We tried, there's nothing we can do. But there's a lot of good left in the world. There's a lot of good people willing to do good things. They just need to be armed with that information. They need to be aware, and they need to be able to relate to these animals. And as silly as picturing this hippo as like a Godzilla type kaiju destroying a city. As silly as those things are, as unrelated to science

as they are. Who would have thought that it could have gotten this many people to care about pigmy hippospecies. So I guess to summarize that, it's every animal has a chance to be just as special. I encourage people to take a look at how they can talk about their animals in entertaining ways, go out of the box, be a little weird with it.

money will be used to preserve her species. But as we said before in the last few weeks, the ku Kio Open Zoo has made an effort to formally trademark Moudang's image, not to protect her from being commercialized, but to make certain that only they could commercialize her. Can we do better?