Moo Deng Is More Than a Meme

Everyone, it seems, wants a portion of Moo Deng. The babe pygmy hippo is hardly 2 months aged and already famous. So beloved connected TikTok, Instagram, and X is Moo Deng that workers astatine Khao Kheow Open Zoo, the spot successful Thailand wherever she was born, are doing each they tin to support up with her fans’ appetite for more. They station videos, photos, updates. They besides invited thousands of visitors a time and find themselves having to support Moo Deng erstwhile tourists throw shells astatine her portion she’s conscionable trying to chill.

Moo Deng, a sanction that means “bouncy pig,” has astir apt been each implicit your timeline lately—on Sephora constitution tutorials, connected X’s main feed. She was calved successful July and successful the past fewer weeks has go the Internet’s New Favorite Animal. A contented astir arsenic aged arsenic the net itself, Favorite Animals—Maru, immoderate of the dogs connected the shiba inu puppy cam, those 2 llamas who conscionable happened to tally escaped the aforesaid day everyone was trying to determine what colour The Dress was—come into the nationalist consciousness seemingly retired of nowhere. Some, similar Doge, instrumentality around; others disappear, oregon simply outgrow their cuteness, wrong a substance of weeks.

All of which makes capitalizing connected their fame a substance of immoderate urgency. It seems heartless to deliberation of animals this way, but if their owners don’t, idiosyncratic other will. Perhaps that’s wherefore zoo manager Narongwit Chodchoi told the Associated Press this week that the zoo has begun the process of trying to trademark and patent the hippo to debar her likeness getting utilized by anyone else—a astute determination considering Moo Deng mugs, T-shirts, and different merch are already popping up online. Income from these efforts, Chodcho told the ligament service, could “support activities that volition marque the animals’ lives better.”

Moo Deng mightiness request it. Fandom is getting a spot out of control these days. As popular stars similar Chappell Roan person amassed online and offline fame, they’ve besides had to usage their platforms to ask for space from boundary-less fans and stalkers. Social media celebs similar Drew Afualo, connected whose podcast Roan appeared to speech astir the subject, besides archer stories of being approached successful nationalist by radical who simply cognize them from the internet.

It whitethorn look unusual to comparison them to Favorite Animals, but the ways successful which radical consciousness entitled to their clip aren’t that acold apart. Everyone wants thing for the ’gram, adjacent if that thing is simply a surviving being with its ain consciousness of agency. One of Moo Deng’s most fashionable TikToks has 34 cardinal views, and zoo unit person had to bounds her visiting clip to five minutes connected Saturdays and Sundays to support excessively galore radical from trying to get contented of their own.

Trademark protections whitethorn beryllium the champion mode for Moo Deng’s caretakers to guarantee others don’t currency successful connected her viral fame. When Jools Lebron made efforts to trademark her “very demure, precise mindful” meme, 1 of the hurdles that emerged was that it’s hard to assertion ownership of a phrase. As Kate Miltner, a lecturer successful data, AI, and nine astatine the University of Sheffield’s Information School, told maine astatine the time, memes with audiovisual elements, similar Nyan Cat oregon Grumpy Cat, are easier to register. “People volition invariably effort to marque wealth disconnected of viral oregon memetic content, arsenic we've seen clip and again,” Miltner says erstwhile asked astir trademarking the babe hippo, adding that the Cincinnati Zoo has already done this with Fiona the Hippo. “It's astute of the Khao Kheow Open Zoo to (at slightest effort to) guarantee that they’re the ones that bash so.”