S6E7: Moo Deng – Questioning if Zoos are Living Collections

Rosa questions whether zoos could be thought of as “living collections” that objectifying animals in ways that are similar to the animal objects one finds in a museum or archive.  She considers the internet sensation Moo Deng and asks whether her fame as achieved much in the way of the conservation goals for pygmy hippos. 

• Meet Moo Deng, the baby pygmy hippo taking the internet by storm by The Today Show. 

Credits:

• Recorded: 3 June 2025
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from The Today Show
• Learn more about the team here. 

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Transcript

Siobhan O'Sullivan 0:01

This is another Eye Raw podcast.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 0:12

Welcome back to season six of the Animal Highlights, where we're focused in on museum collections and, in scare quotes, objects. In today's episode, Rosa does something that's quite interesting. She goes from her focus on historical objects and trying to think about the lives of historical animals to continuing the thread that she picked up when she was talking about moths and wasps to thinking about animals today and the ways in which they interact with museum spaces. But she does this by talking about the zoo and whether the zoo could be considered a form of a collection space. And she raises a whole host of interesting and ethical questions about that by focusing on an internet sensation, Moodle. Hello, Rosa. Welcome back to the Annual Highlight, your final script for this season. Yay! Do a little dance. That's a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed uh learning from you and talking about museums and archives. And I know we'll have one more episode where we kind of give a bit of a review of all of your episodes and have a bit of a conversation about, um, I guess, I mean, I don't know, like museums and animals or curation and animals. We'll see how the conversation goes. Um, but for today, uh, who are we going to be talking about or what are we looking at?

Rethinking Museums As Living Collections

Rosa Dyer 1:34

Well, so today to kind of finish off the highlights, we're moving to a a sort of different museum space, I guess. So all of the highlights so far have focused on museums, you know, that's been the theme of it. But um, we've kind of focused on traditional museums, I guess, so far. So ethnographic or natural history collections have been what I've tended to focus on. But I've sort of, you know, slightly morbidly came to the realization that all of the things we've talked about have necessitated the animals being dead for us to include them. They're, you know, kind of the afterlives of the animals. But when you think more broadly about the category of museum, actually, you can include things like zoos or botanical gardens, you know, living parks, places like that are all places that also have collections, are also curated, also, you know, as spaces of interpretation and a part of all these questions we've been thinking about in this series. So I thought we'd stray into the world of zoos and think about living collections rather than kind of the afterlives of animals that then come into collections in different forms.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 2:31

That's interesting. So this, yeah, the season has been more about collections and the ways in which items and artifacts and and animals, I suppose, are collected than it is about museums. I mean, we definitely looked at museums as specific kinds of spaces, but I think you're you're right. In thinking back over your episodes, collections is really a key word here, right?

Enter Moo Dang The Pygmy Hippo

Rosa Dyer 2:51

Totally. And I think, you know, I think it's easy to forget that museums aren't just, you know, dusty collections full of dead things. That, yeah, zoos, you know, in a kind of professional capacity, zoos also fall under that, under that umbrella term. If we think of glam, which is uh galleries, libraries, and museums as a kind of overarching term that we have, zoos would come under that, I think. And I think, you know, there are really big ethical and kind of philosophical questions about the existence of zoos. And I think that's a really massive topic that if you don't mind, I think we're just gonna park over. I think it'll come in slightly towards the end of this episode, but I'm gonna park it slightly somewhere else because I'm sure you already covered it anyway on this podcast. But I think if we can really kind of go into what this idea of a living collection is and what it means to curate a living animal, I think that's a really interesting question. And what that difference between a kind of non-living collection versus a living collection means for how we understand museums as spaces of education and research, and also how we connect that to living animals, which has been the theme with this series so far, has been thinking about how we can connect collections to the living animal. But in Zeus, the connection's a bit kind of closer in a way, because the animal is living within the museum space. So, in order to do that, rather than kind of keep it all very abstract and strange, we're going to focus it on probably one of my favorite topics of the Animal Highlights series so far, which is the Moo Dang, the pygmy hippo, who I'm sure everyone listening must know about. Because I don't know how you could have avoided her last year. But um, yeah, so let's talk about Moodang a little hippo.

The Today Show 4:20

These days, Moo Ding, the baby pygmy hippopotamus, seems to be everywhere. She is so adorable across social media and websites, the meme of the moment. And so we're in Thailand. She's this way, seeking out this unlikely superstar in the flesh, all about the city.

Rosa Dyer 4:50

But yeah, so Mu Dang was amazing.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 4:52

Is this Are you calling yourself a grandmother? I think I am. I thought you were starting that sentence by saying that your grandmother knew who Moo Dang was. And I was like, okay.

Rosa Dyer 5:00

She does because I've like absolutely ranted at her about this when I was on the phone with that's another story.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 5:07

Um But I am happy to meet another geriatric on the social media media network.

Species Snapshot: Pygmy Hippo Ecology

Rosa Dyer 5:12

But you know, Moodang, I think, transcends, transcends all. Um so yeah, she's this amazingly cute pygmy hippo that currently lives in a Thai zoo who took over, I think, large areas of the internet and particularly TikTok last year. Um and so kind of before going into the specifics of her stardom and who she is and what that's kind of meant in terms of thinking about living collections, I thought maybe just let's look at the life history first of pygmy hippos as a species, because I think it's really interesting and also I think it's a really important context for understanding then Mudang's life as a social media star, but also as an animal living in a zoo. Um, so mudang is a member of the Liberian pygmy hippo species. So um it's native to Liberia. They're one of two extinct species of pygmy hippo. So um they both kind of exist in the West African region. So as the name suggests, they're very small compared to their enormous and quite dangerous cousins, who we probably are more familiar with. Um they're only very diminutive, they're two and a half feet tall, they're short and stocky with like wigged feet and tiny legs, and they have smooth grey skin, which is kept slick all over by this secretion of hipposiduric acid, which I'd never heard of, but I loved the idea that hippos are named because they're kind of slick and there's a particular acid which causes that. They secrete from mucus glands that are all over their body. Um, and basically it keeps them protected from the sun and hydrated. So a little kind of tiny, slick tiny hippo that moves around in dense swampy rainforest areas of Liberia. They're notoriously very shy and difficult to spot, and so therefore they're very difficult to study, so they're quite an understudied species in general. Um, they're semi-acratic, so they live close to rivers and other bodies of water, and they're herbivores, so they graze on grasses and aquatic plants, and often do so at night to avoid the sun. So they're quite secretive and really quite difficult to study. They're considered endangered under the IECN red list, and there's, I think, suggested maybe less than 2,000 in the wild now, so really quite, you know, small population numbers, and they're really affected by a lot of human-induced threats. So things like agricultural expansion, logging, um, basically just lots of things that are causing habitat fragmentation. So they have these small, quite isolated populations which are really vulnerable because it's quite difficult for them to increase due to the fact that you know their habitat is constantly being encroached upon by these various threats.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 7:26

And are they pretty social or are they do they hang out by themselves less than?

Rosa Dyer 7:30

Yes, so they hang out in groups, I think. Um they're I mean, it's difficult, I think, because they are so secretive, it's quite difficult to understand, you know, what that what completely their social history is. And certainly, I think, you know, the 2000 number I think comes from the 90s, is when that population number was estimated. And so it's quite likely it's gone down a lot. In terms then of how they exist in zoos, so we have this small number that are in in the wild. Um, and actually, there was also a subspecies um in Nigeria that has already gone extinct. So, you know, there is this precedent for it being a very vulnerable species. So the hippos in kind of the ex-situ, so if we think of in situ and ex situ, in situ would be that 2000 population number. Ex situ, though, in terms of how they exist in zoos, is about 350 worldwide. And they've been kept in such in captivity for quite a long time, say since the early 1900s.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 8:23

Wow.

Rosa Dyer 8:24

Um, they're obviously much less common than their kind of bigger cousins, so you tend to quite often see large hippos or, you know, the common hippo in in zoos, but the pygmy hippos are a lot rarer. But they tend to be very popular exhibits in zoos for the kind of obvious reasons that they're very cute and squishy and people like to see them. And they have a reputation for being quite easy to look after in zoos. They don't um, you know, they're said not to have health problems and stuff. But actually, I was reading a recent study that said that that's really not very true. And often captive-bred pygmy hippos are really vulnerable to things like kidney disease and actually obesity. So this idea that we like them because they're fat and squidgy is often leading to them having health concerns in zoos.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 9:03

Oh, interesting. And I was gonna ask there, sorry, if if I'm getting ahead of you, um, those 350, are they kind of animals that were caught in West Africa and introduced to the zoos, or are all these 350 have they been kind of in breeding programs in zoos?

Threats, Status, And Zoo Populations

Rosa Dyer 9:18

So I'm not completely sure. I think it's probably a mix of the two. Certainly, there seems to be quite a breeding program going on for them. So Mu Dang would have been part of that. She was born last year. But actually, one of the things that this study highlighted that I was reading was that they have really quite high neonatal mortality rates. So the success of those breeding pro breeding programs, I think, is fairly variable. So um, yeah, I'm not sure what the proportion is in terms of the overall ex-situ population, but I'd imagine it's probably a mix of the two. So if we kind of have that as our you know, context of the in-situ and ex-situ, kind of broader idea of what pygmy hippos are in terms of zoos and in the wild, if we zoom in on the particular individual that is mu deng, uh, so she was born in July in uh in 2024 um in Gangpra in Thailand. Um her name actually was voted on by followers online. So even before she was born, she was already kind of in this pipeline of social media stardom. Um so her name was voted on, and mudang means bouncy pork in Thai. And so she quickly became this viral sensation, uh, largely, you know, firstly because of her name and you know, this kind of cute image, but also because actually, as a character, she was really charismatic, she is really charismatic. So she has a really cute, bouncy appearance with kind of folded skin, and she's slick and grey. Um, but in terms of her actions, she loves to run around, she loves biting her keepers, she loves running around at high speed and attacking a water hose that is very dog. Um her screams were also very emblematic, so there are lots of kind of edited videos of her screaming and running around and just generally causing chaos. Um, and when the zoo started posting these videos of her, they quickly racked up millions of views and she basically became an international sensation. She was even subject to an SNL sketch at one point. There was a cryptocurrency made of her. Um, and her kind of smooth, moisturized skin was seen as something that we should all envy and was kind of a poster child for certain skin products, I think, at one point. Um, there's this really excellent article I was reading by uh someone called Isafar fan, which I'll link in the blog post, who basically creates a timeline of all the various memes that created or created about her. But basically, yes, she just became this enormous sensation in in TikTok and social media. Um, and weirdly, you know, not only just kind of the really basic, obvious memes of her being cute and stuff, but she also became kind of a meta-icon for, you know, the icon of female rage or of anti-capitalist sentiment. You know, she was attacking her keepers, she was, you know, becoming ungovernable, but all this kind of meta discourse that was happening around her. And it was seen as kind of a symbol of frustration and fury and resistance, often framed against the kind of rise of misogyny that was happening and, you know, the rise of figures like Donald Trump, who were seen as very anti-woman, that, you know, Moo Dang is this ungovernable female hippo. Um described often.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 12:14

That's interesting. Do you think this is just anthropomorphism happening here? And I know that this is an unfair question. I hate it when people just kind of throw around anthropomorphism, but do you think people are actually seeing mooding and thinking about what mooding's life is like? Or do you think they're just using moo dang to serve their own kind of agenda?

Captivity Health Risks And Breeding

Rosa Dyer 12:31

I don't know. I think um, I mean, this is something we'll maybe get into in a sec, but that, you know, it's very difficult when you're watching a five-second TikTok video to, you know, like, are people really looking at this hippo running around and thinking, oh wow, what a symbol of like iconic female rage?

Claudia Hirtenfelder 12:47

I mean, I think that then came later as a way to describe It does make uh female rage, it diminishes both the hippo experience and female rage, I think, just a tad, yeah.

Rosa Dyer 12:55

Yeah. And so I find that, you know, the space of the social media and how that kind of translates into the real world is often a very kind of nebulous relationship. Um, although actually in this case it really did, it did translate into the real world in the sense that the visitor numbers for this zoo massively went up as a result of her being born. Um, and people wanted to come and video her her antics in real life in order to kind of get in on the in on the meme, I guess, um, which was not without its problems. Like the zoo then had to face like, you know, huge um population increases in terms of visitors coming to their zoo. And also, people then had expectations of Mu Dang to perform when they went and saw her. You know, we mentioned that they're um usually nocturnal in the world. So often during the day she'd be wanting to sleep, and people were throwing water bottles at her in order to get her to kind of wake up and run around. So in the end, the zoo actually had to limit the number of people that were able to see her as an exhibit because it was just becoming obviously a problematic thing. So yeah, I mean, I think kind of to go back to your question, there was a there is a real sense of objectification of her that really had quite nefarious kind of real-world impacts on her as a creature, you know, confined to this space and forced to interact with people in, you know, a way that was very demanding of her.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 14:06

100%, yeah.

Rosa Dyer 14:07

Um, I thought it'd be quite interesting though to kind of not to go too like pop psychology on it, but kind of go into why people were so fascinated with her. Um, because I came across this thing um uh that this um Austrian ethologist called Konad Lorenz came up with, um, which is the idea that there's a particular set of characteristics for cuteness that is an actual like measurable scale and that actually Moodeng ticks all of those boxes if you're gonna kind of quantify what cuteness is. So things like large eyes, a round head, a shortened snout are all things that you know score highly if we're thinking about what people think of cute. But interestingly, his definition of it was um something that makes you want to care for something. So, you know, to have this feeling of you know, giving out of empathy was also part of his definition of cuteness. And throwing water bottles doesn't really seem to be part of that to me.

Moo Dang’s Rise To Viral Fame

Claudia Hirtenfelder 14:57

But um, I think that's definitely a product of, I mean, it's it's interesting. We we associate, I think, cuteness with kindness, but that's not necessarily kindness and um terribleness can often be very close to one another. You can think you're being kind when you're actually being terrible, unfortunately, which makes kind of navigating the world sometimes um difficult. But yeah, and also I think the ideas of cuteness change over time. I do think that Conrad Lawrence was on a, you know, on track. Some of these things track with human psychology for cuteness because of what our babies look like, right? We're kind of psychologically hardwired to find certain elements worthy of protection, right? Like we you need me to protect you or look after you. Uh, but I also think some ideas of cuteness can change over time. And I'm thinking here of pugs, for example, right? Like pugs have they're cute, but I think as their kind of breeding is continuously bastardized the ways in which they look, um, I think and more people become alert to how breeding practices can really create ailments and disabilities in these animals. Like you're breeding through um in in German, they call it um uh they call it torture breeds. So you're actually breeding like this animal's torture, right? Their life will be really hard because of the ways they breathe. And now when I see their pugs, it's not that I don't think they're cute, but it's a much more ambivalent feeling.

Rosa Dyer 16:18

It's not like that ah feeling, it's like, ah, yeah, you've got all this baggage of like what a brachiocephalic breed is and all of this kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 16:28

Um anyway, so so what what what about uh Conrad? So you've you've what what happened from there?

Memes, Meanings, And Misreadings

When Online Hype Hits The Zoo

Rosa Dyer 16:35

Well, so it was kind of interesting because I was trying to link it back to okay, how do we, you know, how has she come to this position? Why has she even picked as this kind of, you know, was that a thing that happened at random? And I, you know, on the one hand, no, you know, if you think, okay, this rubric of cuteness, of course, people are going to think she was cute, but also actually people have done studies of um what we call kind of zoo ambassadors. So when we think about zoos and we think about kind of the charismatic individuals that live in them, often they're kind of positioned as animals that are ambassadors for their species, that you know, they have to live in an enclosure or a cage or whatever, but in doing so they help, you know, protect the rest in the wild. And um studies have shown that the most kind of successful animal ambassadors, so the ones that get the most traction online, the one that, you know, sell the most plushies or whatever, do tend to be animals that are either cute, they're active, um, they have some kind of entertaining behavior, or they're endangered. Um, and Mudang, you know, ticks all of those boxes basically. So actually, if you were going to, you know, in a lab design an animal ambassador, she's probably actually basically what you'd come up with. Um and whether that was, you know, something that the zoo particularly thought about or not, probably not. But you know, she did seem quite destined for this, for this role, basically. I think so, yeah. Um, so she was bred there. I don't know if both parents or whether they maybe tried to breeding programs to bring anyone in. I'm not sure. Um so animals like Moodan have this potential to bring both attention and also money into the zoo, and often, you know, the kind of existential justification for zoos is that the animals housed in the museums allow for external kind of in- situ research, and that's often how we kind of justify, you know, okay, perhaps zoos aren't always 100% great at maintaining all the needs of an animal, but at least, you know, you're supporting this broader, broader population. Um, and I guess kind of to finish and think a bit more philosophically about zoos, not to kind of go into it massively, but I was interested to kind of research whether this was true about whether, you know, does that do actually these animal ambassadors actually help help it um in situ populations? And so studies have shown that while zoos might have really large followings on social media, their posts actually really rarely mention conservation work. So oftentimes, you know, it's moodang running around eating a hose pipe, but you're not actually talking about the wild populations that are on the IUCN Red List that do need a lot of conservation support. And as I mentioned, they're very difficult to study as a species. And so um journalists actually asked um conservationists if they thought the kind of moodang phenomenon had actually helped pygmy hippos in the wild. Um and a researcher who worked with them gave the kind of very lukewarm response of not yet, which I thought was interesting. And so she felt that whilst, you know, this whole kind of frenzy around mudang had raised the profile of the species, there was a really long way to go before that could actually benefit any kind of targeted conservation efforts. And that, you know, watching funny videos and participating in memes doesn't necessarily translate into greater exposure for conservation agencies. And it doesn't seem like the memefication of mudang as a kind of icon of female rage or cryptocurrency or anti-capitalism or even, you know, enviable skincare, that doesn't actually really translate into anything that helps either in-Situ populations or indeed ex-Situ populations, you know, it hasn't changed anything about her care. It hasn't, you know, if anything, it's created more stress for her by being having water bottles thrown at her head. So I think I kind of came out of reading about her and reading about kind of animal ambassadors, very skeptical about whether that was something that really was justifiable. And so I don't know. I kind of felt as living collections, animals and zoos are perhaps in some ways becoming more and more like the other animal objects we've talked about. I think I kind of went into it distinguishing, okay, living and non-living, these might be two kind of very different forms of collection. But I think they're still very objectified. And, you know, a real sense of, you know, the the space of the zoo itself is really one where, you know, the animal doesn't really have any agency. And, you know, there's their kind of way that they interact with the world is very, it's very enclosed. And, you know, I don't know. I I came out very ambivalent to how I felt about Mu Jang, even though I, you know, she's great to look at and I love her, but I think the kind of broader context of it left.

Why Cute Works: The Science

Claudia Hirtenfelder 20:54

Well, I think that's such a powerful comparison. I mean, thinking and making a comparison, I think, between these objects that are comprised of dead animal parts, and and throughout the season you've had to kind of track the traces of these animals. How do we find the individuals behind this object? You know, a a hat in a in a museum comprises of several individuals. How do we tell those live histories? And I think throughout the season you've had this tension of population and individual. How do you tell the history of an individual and how do you also be alert to kind of the population? But here I think you're also speaking, you know, about the objectification of live animals. And I think that's such a powerful comparison because on the one hand, while you've got in museums objects, you know, objectively objects, uh, uh with the afterlives of animals, I think what you're saying here is how we've kind of socially also created living objects, uh, and in that way completely disavowed or not taken seriously what they might need, whether it's the individual in the zoo or the populations beyond. And I I think you point to very uh Big problem with regards to zoos. And I know you said at the beginning, let's put the ethics aside for a minute, but I think this is an important component. Zoos are often sold as these conservation sites and practices. And they do do a lot of research. Same as museums. There's a lot more going on at zoos than what you just see in the exhibits or what you see on display. And there's a lot more research and a lot more in terms of artifacts and things that are kept behind the scenes. So I have no doubt that there's interesting research happening at zoos. But I think oftentimes that kind of connection between conservation and the work done at zoos is made too strongly and too quickly without enough kind of explanation and very little, I think, in the way of thinking through the ethics of what we do to individuals. Is it ethically justifiable to confine an individual to save a species? And I mean, I think I know where I stand on this, but I also understand that kind of logic of saying, well, if we sacrifice one individual, will we help an entire population? And even if we take that argument at face value, like you said, if if that's not really even happening, then what are we doing? And then and then we're actually just being honest that that's a form of entertainment. You're keeping them because not only are they now a form of physical entertainment that people pay tickets to go to, they're a form of online entertainment and revenue income. And and that's very sad.

Rosa Dyer 23:26

Yeah, yeah, completely I agree with everything you just said. And I think, yeah, this kind of slightly nefarious new dimension that has come in really, you know, in the last couple of decades of social media being a big part of that is this whole other form of objectification that is happening, you know, in a space way outside of the zoo, but does have real consequences for the individuals living in those zoos, you know, that it did have an impact on who was coming to see her, what their expectation was of the kind of performance of the animal was influenced by this much broader context that occurs. So yeah, I think there's all these different levels of objectification that surround, you know, the idea of the living collection and indeed any collection, and that it's really quite easy to lose track of the individual that lives at the center of that and has to, you know, is experiencing it as, you know, as their life, their one life that they have that, you know, hasn't been chosen for them.

The “Ambassador” Logic Tested

Claudia Hirtenfelder 24:17

And also perhaps something here, and maybe it's a thread we can pick up on in the final discussion, there's this kind of desire to own, right? In all of these collections, whether it's a a collection of um inanimate objects or of animate uh beings, uh dead or alive, there's this desire to kind of own, whether it's to own the knowledge or own the object, um, the act of collecting to some extent, and then it's not always the same, to collect is not necessarily to own, but I think in the case of institutions like museums or like zoos, and even in thinking about social media, there's this ownership of an experience. There's the ownership of the animal, there's the ownership of the artifact. And this can lead to, I think, an explosion of other collecting attitudes and practices, right? So there's a reason you see kind of an explosion of keeping quote-unquote exotic animals, right? Uh, people now keeping tigers in backyards or um, you know, collecting pygmies. Guaranteed, I think if we were to look into it, you're gonna see a spike in pygmy pet keeping since the the rise of of Mudeng. And and yeah, it's it's just it's it's interesting how this kind of like ownership consumption works together with this collecting mentality. Like if we can just collect enough experiences with enough animals, then somehow we'll be satisfied. And um yeah, I don't know, there's some sort of psychological something or other going on there that I'm not wanting to talk about. Well, thank you so much, uh Rosa. This has been really great. Um, I'm looking forward to kind of maybe unpacking some of these threads between your different episodes in the next and final episode of your season. So see you then. That's going to be exciting. See you then, Claudia. Thank you to Rosa Dyer for co-hosting this animal highlight with me, to Rebecca Shen for doing the episode artwork and animal highlight logo, and to Gordon Clark for doing the bed music. Other sound effects in this episode come from a news report by The Today Show. This episode was produced by myself.

Siobhan O'Sullivan 26:19

This is the Animal Highlight with me, Toria Hirtenfelder.com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.