Meet ‘New Deng’: Virginia Zoo’s Latest Addition Is a Baby Pygmy Hippo

Watch retired Moo Deng, there’s a caller babe pygmy hippo successful town. The Metro Richmond Zoo successful Virginia conscionable announced the accomplishment of a healthy-looking pistillate calf calved earlier this month.

The hippo calf was calved December 9 to parents Iris and Corwin pursuing a seven-month gestation, according to a zoo statement. The unnamed babe is the parents’ 3rd calf successful little than 5 years, and the 2nd to amusement up close earlier the holidays. The palmy commencement is an particularly important lawsuit due to the fact that pygmy hippos are an endangered species successful the wild.

Pygmy hippos (Choeropsis liberiensis) are 1 of 2 surviving hippo taxon remaining successful the world, the different being the communal hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius). As their sanction implies, pygmy hippos are much smaller than their cousins. Adult pygmy hippos whitethorn measurement lone betwixt 400 and 600 pounds, compared to big communal hippos that weigh astatine slightest 3,000 pounds (male communal hippos tin measurement up to 3 times more).

That said, pygmy hippos are inactive hefty—even from the precise start. The Metro Richmond Zoo’s calf weighed 15 pounds 5 days aft her birth—or astir doubly arsenic dense arsenic a emblematic quality newborn. So far, everything seems to beryllium going smoothly, arsenic the babe is nursing and increasing quick.

The hippo’s accomplishment could bring a flurry of attraction to the zoo, fixed the public’s caller frenzy implicit babe zoo animals, from Pesto the penguin to Kirby, the Houston Zoo’s bug-eyed elephant calf.

The Metro Richmond calf is 1 of respective pygmy hippo calves to marque headlines this year, alongside an unnamed calf astatine Athens’ Attica Zoological Park and the Edinburgh Zoo’s Haggis. The astir celebrated hippo calf of the day, Moo Deng, became an net sensation practically overnight and has faced her just share of abusive, object-throwing fans astatine her location zoo successful Thailand.

“Most radical don’t get a hippopotamus for Christmas astatine all, truthful we consciousness fortunate to person received 2 implicit the years,” the zoo said successful its statement announcing the birth.

Iris and “New Deng” (trademark pending) person been relocated to a backstage hay-filled enclosure for the clip being, which volition let them to decently bond, zoo officials said. Eventually, the calf volition determination into the zoo’s publically viewable indoor excavation exhibit, wherever it volition astir apt endear itself to adoring fans anxious for much babe hippo content.

Iris and her newborn, yet-to-be-named calf. Photo: Metro Richmond Zoo

Pygmy hippos are overmuch little assertive than their communal cousins, which are known to termination hundreds of humans annually successful the wild, truthful there’s small interest of the babe hippo causing uncontrollable carnage.

Unlike communal hippos, which unrecorded successful herds, pygmy hippos usually unrecorded unsocial oregon sometimes successful pairs arsenic adults. Once the newborn calf is afloat grown, the zoo plans to determination her to different parkland oregon sanctuary wherever she tin brace with a prospective mate and hopefully person her ain children arsenic portion of ongoing conservation efforts.

Both hippo taxon are facing population troubles successful the parts of Africa they telephone home. But the pygmy hippos’ concern is acold graver; An estimated 2,500 pygmy hippos still exist successful the wild, compared to implicit 120,000 communal hippos. So arsenic meme-able arsenic this latest calf whitethorn become, her accomplishment is besides captious to ensuring the semipermanent survivability of the species.

In the meantime, the Metro Richmond Zoo is already hard astatine enactment moving PR for its hippo star. Just today, the zoo announced a nationalist canvass to determine the calf’s caller sanction from 4 disposable options: Poppy, Juniper, Hammie Mae, and Omi. The poll, which volition adjacent connected December 31, tin beryllium viewed (and voted on) here.