Thailand’s Pygmy Hippo Moo Deng marked her first birthday on Thursday and pulled crowds of diehard fans, even when she left the cute animals in the animals that deserved her global internet fame.
Large crowds are expected at a four-day festival in Khao Kheow Open Zoo, where MOO Deng-what “bouncy castle” in Thais means-in-star Stard and five million followers of social media have collected.
The first day of the Extravaganza fell on a Thai holiday with an agenda, including a lecture about “Mooi Deng’s Cladiness”, while a beautician of skin care paid to sponsor her fruit-festival birthday cake.
About 100 fans gathered on Thursday morning outside her housing, less than the hordes she ordered at the height of her fame, but still animated with worship.
Jennifer Tang took a week off from her work in Malaysia to make the pilgrimage and told AFP that she was “a bit obsessed with the calf that she described as a” chaos anger -potato “.
“She’s really special for me, she makes me happy,” she said. Tang insisted that Moo Deng “is still really brutal and funny”, despite the approach of adulthood.
“Look at the crowd today – she is still a legend,” she added.
Moo Deng today swollen to 93 kg at the birth of 5 kg.
She spent her birthday in her fence, chewing fruit and vegetables, a stark contrast with the energetic but awkward antics that deserved her fame as a pachyder of pint-sized.
“Moo Deng used to be very naughty and always jumped around,” said Attaphol Nundee, one of her six handlers. “Now she just eats and sleeps.”
“Her popularity is delayed,” admitted the 32-year-old. “But some old fans have returned, and there are also new ones.” Despite her decreasing fame, “raise her eyes when people take pictures of her,” he added.
Her handlers have been set to auction her possessions later, but it is unclear which possessions she has collected in her short life in the province of Chonburi, a two-hour ride of Bangkok.
‘Nice does not last long’
Moo Deng’s Blubbery Rose-Blushed Face launched a thousand memes and an abundance of merchandise, including piggy banks, party shirts and ice lollings, causing her owners to act her similarity.
She once used ticket sales for the zoo where she lives in a scarce, stone, five square meters (54 square feet) public housing, once 24/7 to alleviate the internet for her.
There was hope that her star row was the plight of the endangered Pygmy -Nijlpaard, originating from West -Africa, to be brought to the attention, with only about 2500 alive according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But social media and search engines suggest that the popularity of MOO Deng peaked at the end of September last year before he dropped dramatically.
“Moo Deng went viral very quickly when she was born,” said Joshua Paul Dale, an academic who gives courses about the phenomenon of “Cute” at Japanese Chuo University.
“Perhaps a part of our appreciation for cute is knowing that it is something that is not very long,” he said AFP.
MOO Deng is part of a Pantheon of trapped animals who have enjoyed a flash-in-the-pan popularity for their cute online, including Australia’s Pesto the Penguin and Hua Hua the Panda in China.
Pygmy -thighs have a lifespan of between 30 and 50 years.
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