October 22, 2024 • 57 mins
She's, with apologies to the Hawk Tuah lobby, the queen of the internet in 2024 -- baby pygmy hippo Moo Deng.
Her fifteenth minute is far from over, but this week Jamie dives into the world of the viral zoo animal. She's far from the first, joining a legacy of viral animals whose life is flattened to a static image, without wondering why we're looking at them in the first place. We go into the ordeal that is becoming famous while captive, and Jamie speaks with zoologist Oliver, aka Dr. Wildlife, about the ethics of zoos and how we can better protect the animals that become a part of our digital language.
Follow Dr. Wildlife here: https://linktr.ee/drwildlife
See Jamie in LA on November 1st & 20th: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-tiny-man-is-trying-to-kill-me-tickets-1039733048537
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi everyone, it's Jamie here with two quick reminders at
the top. First, if you are in the Los Angeles
area in November, I'm going to be workshopping my new
one person show called The Tiny Man Is Trying to
Kill Me, of course, and tickets are already running low.
I'm going to be doing workshop shows on Friday, November
first and Wednesday, November twentieth at the Lyric Hyperion, with
(00:26):
more dates to come.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
But if you want to.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
See the show early, tickets are running low, so get them.
It's really goofy, there's some body horror and I'm really
in my bag, So tickets in the description. And also
just a reminder that there is a sixteenth minute Reddit
board that is moderated by our amazing editor and producer
Ian Johnson if you want to chat about episodes after
you listen and.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Now, Moo dang, moo dang, move dang, what did they
do to you? Moodang?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
If you're listening to this episode at the time of release,
you are either thrilled or completely sick of hearing about Moodang.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
A now three month.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Old baby Pygmy Hippo at the kaal Kio Open zoo
in Thailand who went viral on TikTok for being a
three month old baby pygmy hippo. Moodang is the rare
internet phenomenon that no one dislikes. She lives to get
water from the hose from her zookeeper. She bites said
zookeeper's legs when there's not enough water from the hose.
(01:34):
She's a sassy, slick little baby who will one day
grow to be around three thousand pounds, suckling from her
mom as the hippo matriarch chows down eighty pounds of
grass a day. She is beauty, she is rage. There's
nothing controversial about Moodang. What could possibly be controversial about Moodang?
Speaker 4 (02:02):
At just two months old, this little baby hippo is
already in Internet giants.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
The hottest, hottest new it girl on the planet.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
She's redefining beauty standards.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
She's got chubby, pink cheeks, a distinct potato shape.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
We're talking about moo Tang.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
So we have like a little Moodang mean group chat
where we're like sharing, and we talked about getting Moodang
tattoos as a joke, but now it feels serious.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So the moodang mania is still spreading and sparking a
small business boom.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
The comedian shut down criticism surrounding a now viral appearance
on Weekend Update in which he channeled the pop star
well dressed as viral baby hippo Moodang has a.
Speaker 7 (02:46):
Baby Hippo sparked the next trend in makeup.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Oh my god, we can't even look at a baby
hippo without starting discourse. You guys, chill out, please look
mooddang is fifteenth Minute is still very much underway, but
the human ability to torpedo a good thing inside of
six weeks remains completely undefeated. So today, in a special
(03:12):
mini ishisode, we're going to talk about Moodang, the phenomenon
of the social media zoo star.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And what we can do.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
To make the world more safe for the tiny slick
queen of the Internet.
Speaker 7 (03:25):
Play the music the.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Welcome to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a
look at the Internet's characters of the day, see how
their moment affected them and what it says about us
and the Internet at large. And this week we're on
a bit of a side quest, taking a look not
just at current viral zoo sensation, Moo Dang the Hippo.
But at the long standing phenomenon of zoo celebrities. Zoo celebrities,
(04:40):
I don't want to coin a term because don't worry,
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
(05:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
No.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
This week we're talking zoo sensations because while animals who
go viral online have a lot in common regardless of
where they live, this conversation is very much its own thing.
Speaker 7 (05:30):
So you earned it.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Let's start by talking about the current queen supreme of
the Internet, Miss Moodang the Hippo.
Speaker 7 (05:39):
Come with me if.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
You will to last month, it feels dramatic to say
we've already been through so much with moodang discourse. But
I'm kind of not joking when I say that, I
really do feel like internet sensations tend to inspire an
absurd amount of discourse, way more than they normally would
in the year before and after an election cycle in
(06:04):
the US because of.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Our rotting brains.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So let's get into it. Pigmy hippos aren't from Thailand natively.
They're West African, a little smaller than your average hippo,
and are very endangered, with an approximated less than three
thousand that still live in the wild in their native habitat,
mainly due to environmental destruction because of illegal logging and mining.
(06:27):
There's an approximate three hundred and fifty pygmy hippos living
in zoos across the world as of late twenty fourteen,
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
(06:50):
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
(07:14):
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,
(07:34):
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.
(08:01):
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
(08:24):
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,
(08:46):
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.
(09:12):
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,
(09:35):
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
(09:57):
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.
Speaker 8 (10:06):
The post says, this baby pigmy hippopotamus is a favorite
of tourists who bring their children to admire its cuteness
and take pictures as souvenirs. This baby pygmy hippopotamus is
the seventh from this pair of parents at kaw Kio
Open Zoo. At the moment, that baby pygmy hippopotamus does
not have an aim, they will announce its name soon.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
The post goes on to describe that Moodang has been
a hit among attendees because of her high energy and
pension for biting her zoo keeper, and that there would
be a discount promotion to line up with the King
of Thailand's seventy second birthday, where she'd be on display.
Admission to the zoo translates to about ten dollars and
fifty cents in US dollars, and the zoo has been
(10:52):
opened since back in the nineteen seventies. And look, I'm
not going to bother analyzing why Moodang be king such
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
(11:13):
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.
(11:37):
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
(12:00):
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
(12:24):
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
(12:45):
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
(13:09):
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,
(13:29):
screaming Moodang. I know you know the picture I'm talking about.
Speaker 9 (13:34):
Then.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
On September ninth, the Google search trend for Moodang starts
climbing steadily as the mainstream media starts to catch on,
and fan art from the first week of viral Moodang
images keep increasing. Barfan notes that a lot of these
fan images portray Moodng as a feminist icon, the image
(13:55):
of her blurred and screaming body as the epitome of
female ray.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
I can't lie.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Some of these are very funny to me, like as
her male zoo keeper WASH's Moodang. A TikTok user captioned it,
to be a woman is to perform, and the tweets,
of course, came in hot and heavy.
Speaker 8 (14:15):
There is light and curiosity in Moodang's eyes.
Speaker 9 (14:20):
If you need a timeline cleanse, I highly recommend like
a bunch of Moodang posts, the algorithm is providing and
now my feet is full of incredible baby hippo content.
Speaker 8 (14:29):
And she didn't have to serve this hard, but she
did it for us.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Novelty Moodang cakes were made on TikTok. The moist Moodang
makeup tutorial was posted by a beauty influencer, and like clockwork.
Speaker 7 (14:45):
The brands came in.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Most notably Sephora Thailand was right on top of the
Moodang trend, encouraging customers to wear your blush like a
baby hippo. In September, sports team got in on it too.
The Phoenix Suns, Washington Commanders, and the New York Meds
all photoshop their own promotional Moodang memes, and a tie
(15:09):
delivery app put her image on their home screen and
before you know it, people got even weirder about it
because you can't have a viral animal without a bunch
of weirdolls threatening to eat them. Twitter user big content
Guy says.
Speaker 8 (15:27):
I'd smoke mood Dang for twelve hours like a brisk.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
On September eighteenth, and you would think that's the weirdest one.
But our producer Ian did find this even worse one.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
It says, I'd marinate moodang and soy sauce with mad
garlic and chili peppers, then coat the fat cap with
coarse sea salt to dry out overnight. Then I'd smoke
it over applewood and reverse sereate to crisp up, and
I'd serve with Hawaiian rolls and coleslaw.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Okay, is this kind of an edgeler joke? Yes, It's
something I would have said when I was twenty two.
But there are enough examples as the weeks go on
of MoU Dang being either threatened to be killed or eaten,
or being photoshopped doing something violent that she became This
example of something called the cute aggression phenomenon which quicksidebar
(16:21):
bear with me, is a proven psychological thing in some
humans where they see something adorable and their first instinct
is to, you know, squish.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
It, attack it, try to eat it.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
A literal embodiment of the iconic Despicable Me moment.
Speaker 7 (16:40):
Look at that flappy unicor. He don't set them in
A guy's not flussy.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Shout out to the minions, especially Kevin. I'm really curious
if you experience this.
Speaker 7 (16:51):
I bravely do not.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
But a study from twenty eighteen estimated that about half
of adults.
Speaker 7 (16:57):
Do you fucking se goes?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And it's not like people who experience cute aggression are
actually at risk to like squish a puppy's head until
it pops off, you see. Riverside psychologist Catherine Stephropoulos describes
the feeling as the human brain being overwhelmed by the
positive emotion of seeing something adorable, which makes their lizard
brain want to bite it.
Speaker 9 (17:23):
She says, when people feel this way, it's with no
desire to cause harm. I think this is weird. I'm
probably the only one who feels this way. I don't
want to hurt it. I just want to eat.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
It, Okay, But I do think this does explain some
of the reaction to MoU Dang. For example, a zoo
attendee told AP News in September.
Speaker 7 (17:43):
She's such a cute little lump.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I want to baller up and swallow her a whole.
And I always wondered what this tendency was to like
pretend to eat babies and small animals and have it
be a socially acceptable cute thing to do. And it's
that because the human mind, well, it's very small. And
while some people were fantasizing about squishing, pummeling, and eating
(18:07):
Moodang's chubby little body until she exploded, the zoo she
lived at realized if they wanted to maintain Mudang's success,
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.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
After we do this, we will have more income to
support activities that will make the animals lives better.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
The plan was to make shirts and sweatpants only to
be sold at the zoo, because by this point visitorship
had more than quadrupled. Around four thousand visitors a day
were watching Mudang for five minute intervals. After the zoo
changed the policy before being told to hit the road,
and because Mudang had had things thrown at her, the
(19:01):
zoo had to put up a sign to remind visitors
to stop throwing things at Moodang in three different languages.
(19:25):
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,
(19:46):
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
(20:11):
just a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
I'm ten weeks old, Colin. Of course I know chapel roone.
And by the way, leave her alone. Let her take
as much time as she needs for her mental health.
We both deserve patience and grace, so stop harassing her
and stop throwing shellfish at her. Do not yell my
name or expect a photo just because I'm your parasocial
bestie or because you appreciate my talent.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I know you can't see it, but no matter what
you think about this sketch, the costume is fucking incredible.
And it's here where the Internet becomes extremely unwell about
the whole Moodang situation. So in case you're a straight guy,
this sketch is a reference to a recent round of
discourse surrounding pop star Chapel Roone, who fucking rocks. I
(20:59):
can't believe we finally have an openly lesbian pop star
with great politics, and the public has responded by trying
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
(21:21):
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.
Speaker 6 (21:37):
I'm your favorite hippo's favorite Pippo and time thirsty thirsty hose.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
But my god, if we needed proof that Moodang had
fully invaded the zeitgeist and only kind of funny but
still weirdly controversial, SNL sketch is an excellent yardstick. But
the biggest controversy, one that's been raging on for over
one hundred years, is should we even be able to
aggle Moodang in the confines of a zoo at all?
(22:10):
Should the zoo go the way of P. T. Barnum's
circus and disappear? Okay, I'm sorry for punishing you with
two greatest Showman bits, two episodes in a row. I
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
(22:30):
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
(22:50):
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,
(23:14):
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
(23:34):
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
(23:55):
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
(24:16):
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.
Speaker 10 (24:34):
But but the case against zeus in their current form,
to me, is far more compelling, and Moudeng's treatment by
the public is a clear example of it.
Speaker 7 (24:47):
The quote that.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Sticks with me most strongly comes from Dale Jamison and
his book Ethics on the Arc.
Speaker 8 (24:53):
He says, zoos alleviate our sense of guilt for what
we are doing to the planet, but they do little
to help the animals we are driving to extinction.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
And that's kind of what the Moodang phenomenon is right
A topic of conversation that doesn't feel shitty to talk
about during a period of enormous human unrest. So, in short,
let's talk about why animal rights activists, a famously intense
crowd I will admit, are ethically opposed to the zoo.
(25:27):
Most advocates believe that zoos, particularly for profit zoos, are
not a viable or ethical way to meaningfully conserve an
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
(25:51):
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
(26:13):
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.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
Here's what Keita.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Asia had to say about the Moodang phenomenon on September twentieth.
Speaker 8 (26:38):
There is nothing cute about a baby being born in captivity.
Hippos belong in the wild, but moudang will never live
outside a cage, she faces a lifetime of confinement, deprived
of her freedom and the opportunity to experience her natural
habitat and the social structures of her species. Animals do
(26:59):
not exist exist for our entertainment. Breeding them for public
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.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
But as Moudang Zoo has alluded to, every time the
subject of merch is broached, it's okay because the money
from that merch and all of this increased attendance to
see Moudang at the zoo will be put towards animal conservation.
And I can't prove that's not true. By all accounts,
(27:38):
the ku Kio Open Zoo does its level best to
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
(27:59):
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
(28:21):
or the Frontline.
Speaker 8 (28:24):
The past care of Mudang has been good to a
certain extent, according to the international standard system that is
accepted worldwide. However, if we want to take better care
of it, we should take care of the temporary environment,
such as the group of monkeys that came to steal
its food and other things.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I would like to encourage.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
The workers who take care of this little star ambassador,
who has created a phenomenon on behalf of people all
over the world, to turn back to take care of
animals for conservation.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And even so, this argument isn't really selling me on
the idea of zoo's being viable. This representative is saying
that the treatment of Moodang is technically up to international standards,
but that doesn't eliminate the idea that allowing animals to
be on display for profit might not be ethical. It's
(29:21):
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,
(29:43):
it wouldn't be a mid twenty twenties press circuit without
an irrational New York Post attempt to cancel a baby hippo.
Speaker 8 (29:55):
Come on, could Moudang be canceled? Leaked videos show those
famed baby hippo biting zoo worker kind of mean. A
late September video shot inside months old Moodang's enclosure within
Thailand's Chamberry Zoo showed the feisty female coming at her
caretaker while he was attempting to hose her down. Commenting
(30:17):
on the widely circulated video, one person accused the animal
of being quote kind of mean. According to The Daily Mail.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Can we be serious?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
We can't be serious? And weirdly, this story might all
sound a little familiar because it repeats the same pattern
we saw with a different celebrity hippo god celebrity hippo
Jamie said on her podcast and was dead serious. There
was a second celebrity hippo. In twenty seventeen, the Cincinnati
(30:49):
Zoo found their star.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
In Fiona the Hippo, from premature baby to bona fide brand,
featured on merchandise, given her own.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Ice cream plate, Chunky Chunky Hippo, even a.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Campaign to make her Time magazine Person of the Year.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
In the world, including me watched as Fiona the Hippo recovered,
the zoo posted videos of her in neonatal intensive care,
being bottle fed, and even her first steps were documented
and posted to a massive public response. And Fiona's arc
was very similar to Mudang's. After she was finally safe
(31:28):
and healthy, attendance at the zoo swelled to record highs.
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
(31:53):
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
(32:14):
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.
(32:35):
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
(33:08):
can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm currently embroiled in
some serious snoopy drama.
Speaker 7 (33:14):
Ah no dogs hard.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
There are indeed two warring factions of snoopy fans online.
In one corner, an ardent leftist shout out to daily snoopies.
In the other, corner, an account which randomly endorsed Donald
Trump with an AI generated image of Snoopy shaking Charlie
Brown donald Trump's hand. Fuck You Snoopy Weekly. If the
(33:47):
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
(34:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
My name is Oliver, though most people online or otherwise
know me as doctor Wildlife. I'm a zoologist with sixteen
years of experience working in zoos and aquariums, starting as
a zoo keeper and eventually moving into management roles. I've
had the privilege of working with so many different animals.
And it's funny because people ask me that and they're like, well,
(34:51):
what have you worked with? And I think it's better
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.
(35:12):
But out of all of that, I would say my
biggest passion is science communication.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
So how did you first become interested in zoology? How
did you first sort of decide that this was going
to be your path?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
So funny enough, I actually was working towards being a
veterinarian because I feel like every kid, when you're young
and you're interested in animals, the whole world is like
be a vet, Be a vet, Be a vet, because
a lot of people don't understand there's a lot of
other animal careers out there. There's all sorts of things
that require different kinds of degrees or no degrees at all,
but it's very interested in being a vet. I grew
(35:45):
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
(36:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
One of the things that I was researching and hadn't
really looked into in some time before starting research for
this episode that I've seen come up around Moudng is
the argument around the ethical nature of zoos. It seems
like you've worked at a wide variety of places with animals,
at sanctuaries, at zoos, and elsewhere. From your perspective, because
(36:51):
I'm coming in pretty cold, what are your feelings around
that issue?
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Do you want me a single person that works in
the zoo, aquarium or sanctuary world that doesn't dream of
a reality where the animals under their care are out
in the wild and lush, thriving environments, being safe, secure,
not poached, and all these issues. Every single person is
of that mindset, and I think that's like a very
(37:18):
big common ground that a lot of people don't think about.
When you think about the world of zoos and aquariums
as having sides, I don't necessarily see it as sides.
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
(37:39):
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
(38:01):
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
(38:23):
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
(38:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
I noticed that the zoo that Mudang is at is
a for profit zoo. The zoo in Cincinnati that Fiona
is at is a nonprofit zoo. Are there different regulations
for a for profit versus a nonprofit?
Speaker 8 (39:11):
I just did.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
I didn't understand if that is a deciding factor of
the kind of care and animal might receive.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah, so funny enough. It ultimately isn't that big of
a difference just because of those factors. I used to
think so, like I used to be firmly against anything
for profit in the animal world, especially in zoos and aquariums,
because I'm like, Okay, these places are meant to be
educational institutions or doing conservation work, So what's a for
(39:39):
profit venture doing in this reality? But ultimately, something that
affects standards and such more is mainly what area of
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,
(40:03):
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
(40:26):
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
(40:47):
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
(41:08):
you really have to kind of look at every little aspect.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
I guess hypothetical situation that is completely true. Let's say,
so I have these complicated feelings around zoos. However, I
don't really feel comfortable telling my cousins with my nieces
and nephews to be like, don't bring your kids to
a zoo, don't teach your children about animals. I understand
that that's kind of a non starter. So if you
(41:33):
are a family with kids and you want them to
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.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Ooh, that is a fantastic question. I think the first
step would be to use the Association of Zoos and
Aquarium's website to check if a place that you or
intending on visiting as accredited or not. I think it
says like find Zoos and Aquariums. There's something very obvious,
but any case, you can look up every accredited animal facility.
(42:09):
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
(42:33):
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
(42:55):
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
(43:18):
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
(43:39):
meets higher standards.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and
talk about the role of social media and animal education.
So because you've been in this space for sixteen years now.
How have zoologists changed in the way that they use
the Internet to educate in the time you've been in
this field.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Oh, they've changed tremendously and I've all seeing a zoologists
also is using aquariums starting to be more informal about
how they educate. I think one of the most amazing
examples of that is Monterey Bay Aquariums social media presence
doing tweets, Like my favorite one that they did was
they tweeted just the ocean. That's all they said, like
(44:20):
the ocean, and it got like I say, millions of likes.
It's probably it's not that high, but thousands of likes
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,
(44:40):
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
(45:00):
keep saying it's the year of science on Twitter and Twitch.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
God, I hope so that would be very excise crossed.
I would love to see science get trash beg a
lot of other.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Things begging into the sky right now at that, I hope, so.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Sort of talking about these social media juggernaut animals that
I mean, I think that there's so many examples of this,
obviously pre dating social media that are more reliant on
marketing narratives, but on social media, the zoo does not
quite have control over the narrative as they once did.
(45:39):
How did you find out about MoU dang? And where
does your head go when you see an animal suddenly
become famous?
Speaker 3 (45:47):
No, it's so funny. I just feel like that little
hippo just appeared so suddenly that I can't exactly remember
where was the first place I saw them. The first
moment that I can like directly really remember is something
really funny. Was one of my friends sharing a video
that I don't know who the original creator of it
(46:07):
was and I can't remember what all was in the video,
but I it was moo as a kaiju like big
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
(46:29):
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
(46:53):
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
(47:15):
this hippo. Everybody knows who this hippo is.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
At this point, what can and should zoos and zoo
keepers do to protect their animals from this kind of
sudden surge of attention because it seemed like it took
it took the zoo a second to be like, well,
hold on, and they made all these adjustments, like they
made adjustments to make it safe for mudang. But in
the age of social media where this is apparently a risk,
(47:42):
what should professionals do to sort of be prepared for that?
And what would you recommend?
Speaker 3 (47:47):
You asking this question kind of like just in this
moment gave you this idea. It's like you almost need someone.
I feel like there should be a workshop for zoos
or some sort of training that it's like a preemptive.
It's kind of like what to do when your animal
goes viral? Kind of course, because you know, say you
start posting like Bob the Elephant. I'm just trying to
(48:10):
come up with something that doesn't maybe doesn't exist, but
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
(48:31):
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
(48:53):
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
(49:14):
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.
(49:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
There's like that level of entitlement, which I feel like
goes back to the argument about like, well, should zoos
exist if there's always going to be bad actors?
Speaker 3 (49:54):
You know, I've been at zoos that have the most
amazing signage in the whole world, and you know, do
everything they can for it, will recommend people for their
bad behavior when they catch them. But there's these people
that just don't care. And I always say that a
lot of that bad behavior continues because no one has
ever told them no in their entire lives, you know,
from the moment they were born.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
My last question is what can zoos and zoo keepers
kind of take away from the mudang osaga. From the
huge public response to this little baby hippo.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
I think the biggest thing is realizing that baby hippo
fans are about to be like, get their pitchforks up
in an instant, but please please hold them for a moment.
As I say this, I think zoo keepers and zoos
aquariums need to realize this baby hippo. It's gonna sound terrible.
She is not unique. And I say that and people
are like and she's unique in the sense that she
(50:47):
has her own personality. You know, she is unique in
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
(51:10):
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
(51:32):
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
(51:55):
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
(52:15):
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
(52:39):
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,
(53:03):
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.
(53:23):
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
(53:43):
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.
(54:05):
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
(54:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Oh Oliver, thank you so much for joining us and
for just speaking so thoughtfully. It's so nice to spend
a little time with you and really feel your passion
for what you do.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Absolutely, thank you so much for having me and being
interested in chatting.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
Thank you so much to Oliver for their time, and
you can follow their work more over at the link
in the description. So where does Moodang go from here?
If she's anything like Fiona the hippo, she'll be a
source of income for her zoo of residence for a
long time to come, and it's very possible that that
money will be used to preserve her species. But as
(55:21):
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?
Speaker 7 (55:38):
I hope so.
Speaker 2 (55:39):
But in the meantime, give my girl the hose anytime
she fucking wants it. Moodang, the baby Hippo. May You're
fifteen minutes, never end baby, And for your moment of fun,
here's a cursed mood Dang parody song from the Edge,
(56:00):
New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Long May she rain.
Speaker 8 (56:08):
You my little mood eh pig me Hippo and the
zoo thing.
Speaker 3 (56:12):
Yeah we know, because hey, you so famous.
Speaker 10 (56:14):
The most decision scene, I am less.
Speaker 4 (56:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (56:16):
We see the names on memes, on memes.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
Fans signing up just to hear them scream. It's all
memes on memes on names.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
It's too much fame for us.
Speaker 7 (56:24):
The Prey Little Being.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and
iHeart Rodeos. It is written, hosted, and produced by me
Jamie Lostis. Our executive producers are Sophie Lickterman and Robert Evans.
The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Our theme song.
Speaker 7 (56:46):
Is by Sad thirteen.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Voice acting is from Grant Crater and pet Shout outs
to our dog producer Anderson, my cat's flee and Casper,
and my pet rock Bert, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Bye.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi everyone, it's Jamie here with two quick reminders at
the top. First, if you are in the Los Angeles
area in November, I'm going to be workshopping my new
one person show called The Tiny Man Is Trying to
Kill Me, of course, and tickets are already running low.
I'm going to be doing workshop shows on Friday, November
first and Wednesday, November twentieth at the Lyric Hyperion, with
(00:26):
more dates to come.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
But if you want to.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
See the show early, tickets are running low, so get them.
It's really goofy, there's some body horror and I'm really
in my bag, So tickets in the description. And also
just a reminder that there is a sixteenth minute Reddit
board that is moderated by our amazing editor and producer
Ian Johnson if you want to chat about episodes after
you listen and.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Now, Moo dang, moo dang, move dang, what did they
do to you? Moodang?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
If you're listening to this episode at the time of release,
you are either thrilled or completely sick of hearing about Moodang.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
A now three month.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Old baby Pygmy Hippo at the kaal Kio Open zoo
in Thailand who went viral on TikTok for being a
three month old baby pygmy hippo. Moodang is the rare
internet phenomenon that no one dislikes. She lives to get
water from the hose from her zookeeper. She bites said
zookeeper's legs when there's not enough water from the hose.
(01:34):
She's a sassy, slick little baby who will one day
grow to be around three thousand pounds, suckling from her
mom as the hippo matriarch chows down eighty pounds of
grass a day. She is beauty, she is rage. There's
nothing controversial about Moodang. What could possibly be controversial about Moodang?
Speaker 4 (02:02):
At just two months old, this little baby hippo is
already in Internet giants.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
The hottest, hottest new it girl on the planet.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
She's redefining beauty standards.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
She's got chubby, pink cheeks, a distinct potato shape.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
We're talking about moo Tang.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
So we have like a little Moodang mean group chat
where we're like sharing, and we talked about getting Moodang
tattoos as a joke, but now it feels serious.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So the moodang mania is still spreading and sparking a
small business boom.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
The comedian shut down criticism surrounding a now viral appearance
on Weekend Update in which he channeled the pop star
well dressed as viral baby hippo Moodang has a.
Speaker 7 (02:46):
Baby Hippo sparked the next trend in makeup.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Oh my god, we can't even look at a baby
hippo without starting discourse. You guys, chill out, please look
mooddang is fifteenth Minute is still very much underway, but
the human ability to torpedo a good thing inside of
six weeks remains completely undefeated. So today, in a special
(03:12):
mini ishisode, we're going to talk about Moodang, the phenomenon
of the social media zoo star.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And what we can do.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
To make the world more safe for the tiny slick
queen of the Internet.
Speaker 7 (03:25):
Play the music the.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Welcome to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a
look at the Internet's characters of the day, see how
their moment affected them and what it says about us
and the Internet at large. And this week we're on
a bit of a side quest, taking a look not
just at current viral zoo sensation, Moo Dang the Hippo.
But at the long standing phenomenon of zoo celebrities. Zoo celebrities,
(04:40):
I don't want to coin a term because don't worry,
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
(05:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
No.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
This week we're talking zoo sensations because while animals who
go viral online have a lot in common regardless of
where they live, this conversation is very much its own thing.
Speaker 7 (05:30):
So you earned it.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Let's start by talking about the current queen supreme of
the Internet, Miss Moodang the Hippo.
Speaker 7 (05:39):
Come with me if.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
You will to last month, it feels dramatic to say
we've already been through so much with moodang discourse. But
I'm kind of not joking when I say that, I
really do feel like internet sensations tend to inspire an
absurd amount of discourse, way more than they normally would
in the year before and after an election cycle in
(06:04):
the US because of.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Our rotting brains.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So let's get into it. Pigmy hippos aren't from Thailand natively.
They're West African, a little smaller than your average hippo,
and are very endangered, with an approximated less than three
thousand that still live in the wild in their native habitat,
mainly due to environmental destruction because of illegal logging and mining.
(06:27):
There's an approximate three hundred and fifty pygmy hippos living
in zoos across the world as of late twenty fourteen,
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
(06:50):
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
(07:14):
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,
(07:34):
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.
(08:01):
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
(08:24):
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,
(08:46):
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.
(09:12):
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,
(09:35):
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
(09:57):
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.
Speaker 8 (10:06):
The post says, this baby pigmy hippopotamus is a favorite
of tourists who bring their children to admire its cuteness
and take pictures as souvenirs. This baby pygmy hippopotamus is
the seventh from this pair of parents at kaw Kio
Open Zoo. At the moment, that baby pygmy hippopotamus does
not have an aim, they will announce its name soon.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
The post goes on to describe that Moodang has been
a hit among attendees because of her high energy and
pension for biting her zoo keeper, and that there would
be a discount promotion to line up with the King
of Thailand's seventy second birthday, where she'd be on display.
Admission to the zoo translates to about ten dollars and
fifty cents in US dollars, and the zoo has been
(10:52):
opened since back in the nineteen seventies. And look, I'm
not going to bother analyzing why Moodang be king such
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
(11:13):
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.
(11:37):
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
(12:00):
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
(12:24):
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
(12:45):
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
(13:09):
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,
(13:29):
screaming Moodang. I know you know the picture I'm talking about.
Speaker 9 (13:34):
Then.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
On September ninth, the Google search trend for Moodang starts
climbing steadily as the mainstream media starts to catch on,
and fan art from the first week of viral Moodang
images keep increasing. Barfan notes that a lot of these
fan images portray Moodng as a feminist icon, the image
(13:55):
of her blurred and screaming body as the epitome of
female ray.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
I can't lie.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Some of these are very funny to me, like as
her male zoo keeper WASH's Moodang. A TikTok user captioned it,
to be a woman is to perform, and the tweets,
of course, came in hot and heavy.
Speaker 8 (14:15):
There is light and curiosity in Moodang's eyes.
Speaker 9 (14:20):
If you need a timeline cleanse, I highly recommend like
a bunch of Moodang posts, the algorithm is providing and
now my feet is full of incredible baby hippo content.
Speaker 8 (14:29):
And she didn't have to serve this hard, but she
did it for us.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Novelty Moodang cakes were made on TikTok. The moist Moodang
makeup tutorial was posted by a beauty influencer, and like clockwork.
Speaker 7 (14:45):
The brands came in.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Most notably Sephora Thailand was right on top of the
Moodang trend, encouraging customers to wear your blush like a
baby hippo. In September, sports team got in on it too.
The Phoenix Suns, Washington Commanders, and the New York Meds
all photoshop their own promotional Moodang memes, and a tie
(15:09):
delivery app put her image on their home screen and
before you know it, people got even weirder about it
because you can't have a viral animal without a bunch
of weirdolls threatening to eat them. Twitter user big content
Guy says.
Speaker 8 (15:27):
I'd smoke mood Dang for twelve hours like a brisk.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
On September eighteenth, and you would think that's the weirdest one.
But our producer Ian did find this even worse one.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
It says, I'd marinate moodang and soy sauce with mad
garlic and chili peppers, then coat the fat cap with
coarse sea salt to dry out overnight. Then I'd smoke
it over applewood and reverse sereate to crisp up, and
I'd serve with Hawaiian rolls and coleslaw.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Okay, is this kind of an edgeler joke? Yes, It's
something I would have said when I was twenty two.
But there are enough examples as the weeks go on
of MoU Dang being either threatened to be killed or eaten,
or being photoshopped doing something violent that she became This
example of something called the cute aggression phenomenon which quicksidebar
(16:21):
bear with me, is a proven psychological thing in some
humans where they see something adorable and their first instinct
is to, you know, squish.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
It, attack it, try to eat it.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
A literal embodiment of the iconic Despicable Me moment.
Speaker 7 (16:40):
Look at that flappy unicor. He don't set them in
A guy's not flussy.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Shout out to the minions, especially Kevin. I'm really curious
if you experience this.
Speaker 7 (16:51):
I bravely do not.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
But a study from twenty eighteen estimated that about half
of adults.
Speaker 7 (16:57):
Do you fucking se goes?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And it's not like people who experience cute aggression are
actually at risk to like squish a puppy's head until
it pops off, you see. Riverside psychologist Catherine Stephropoulos describes
the feeling as the human brain being overwhelmed by the
positive emotion of seeing something adorable, which makes their lizard
brain want to bite it.
Speaker 9 (17:23):
She says, when people feel this way, it's with no
desire to cause harm. I think this is weird. I'm
probably the only one who feels this way. I don't
want to hurt it. I just want to eat.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
It, Okay, But I do think this does explain some
of the reaction to MoU Dang. For example, a zoo
attendee told AP News in September.
Speaker 7 (17:43):
She's such a cute little lump.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I want to baller up and swallow her a whole.
And I always wondered what this tendency was to like
pretend to eat babies and small animals and have it
be a socially acceptable cute thing to do. And it's
that because the human mind, well, it's very small. And
while some people were fantasizing about squishing, pummeling, and eating
(18:07):
Moodang's chubby little body until she exploded, the zoo she
lived at realized if they wanted to maintain Mudang's success,
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.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
After we do this, we will have more income to
support activities that will make the animals lives better.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
The plan was to make shirts and sweatpants only to
be sold at the zoo, because by this point visitorship
had more than quadrupled. Around four thousand visitors a day
were watching Mudang for five minute intervals. After the zoo
changed the policy before being told to hit the road,
and because Mudang had had things thrown at her, the
(19:01):
zoo had to put up a sign to remind visitors
to stop throwing things at Moodang in three different languages.
(19:25):
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,
(19:46):
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
(20:11):
just a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
I'm ten weeks old, Colin. Of course I know chapel roone.
And by the way, leave her alone. Let her take
as much time as she needs for her mental health.
We both deserve patience and grace, so stop harassing her
and stop throwing shellfish at her. Do not yell my
name or expect a photo just because I'm your parasocial
bestie or because you appreciate my talent.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I know you can't see it, but no matter what
you think about this sketch, the costume is fucking incredible.
And it's here where the Internet becomes extremely unwell about
the whole Moodang situation. So in case you're a straight guy,
this sketch is a reference to a recent round of
discourse surrounding pop star Chapel Roone, who fucking rocks. I
(20:59):
can't believe we finally have an openly lesbian pop star
with great politics, and the public has responded by trying
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
(21:21):
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.
Speaker 6 (21:37):
I'm your favorite hippo's favorite Pippo and time thirsty thirsty hose.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
But my god, if we needed proof that Moodang had
fully invaded the zeitgeist and only kind of funny but
still weirdly controversial, SNL sketch is an excellent yardstick. But
the biggest controversy, one that's been raging on for over
one hundred years, is should we even be able to
aggle Moodang in the confines of a zoo at all?
(22:10):
Should the zoo go the way of P. T. Barnum's
circus and disappear? Okay, I'm sorry for punishing you with
two greatest Showman bits, two episodes in a row. I
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
(22:30):
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
(22:50):
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,
(23:14):
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
(23:34):
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
(23:55):
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
(24:16):
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.
Speaker 10 (24:34):
But but the case against zeus in their current form,
to me, is far more compelling, and Moudeng's treatment by
the public is a clear example of it.
Speaker 7 (24:47):
The quote that.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Sticks with me most strongly comes from Dale Jamison and
his book Ethics on the Arc.
Speaker 8 (24:53):
He says, zoos alleviate our sense of guilt for what
we are doing to the planet, but they do little
to help the animals we are driving to extinction.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
And that's kind of what the Moodang phenomenon is right
A topic of conversation that doesn't feel shitty to talk
about during a period of enormous human unrest. So, in short,
let's talk about why animal rights activists, a famously intense
crowd I will admit, are ethically opposed to the zoo.
(25:27):
Most advocates believe that zoos, particularly for profit zoos, are
not a viable or ethical way to meaningfully conserve an
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
(25:51):
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
(26:13):
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.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
Here's what Keita.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Asia had to say about the Moodang phenomenon on September twentieth.
Speaker 8 (26:38):
There is nothing cute about a baby being born in captivity.
Hippos belong in the wild, but moudang will never live
outside a cage, she faces a lifetime of confinement, deprived
of her freedom and the opportunity to experience her natural
habitat and the social structures of her species. Animals do
(26:59):
not exist exist for our entertainment. Breeding them for public
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.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
But as Moudang Zoo has alluded to, every time the
subject of merch is broached, it's okay because the money
from that merch and all of this increased attendance to
see Moudang at the zoo will be put towards animal conservation.
And I can't prove that's not true. By all accounts,
(27:38):
the ku Kio Open Zoo does its level best to
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
(27:59):
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
(28:21):
or the Frontline.
Speaker 8 (28:24):
The past care of Mudang has been good to a
certain extent, according to the international standard system that is
accepted worldwide. However, if we want to take better care
of it, we should take care of the temporary environment,
such as the group of monkeys that came to steal
its food and other things.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I would like to encourage.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
The workers who take care of this little star ambassador,
who has created a phenomenon on behalf of people all
over the world, to turn back to take care of
animals for conservation.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And even so, this argument isn't really selling me on
the idea of zoo's being viable. This representative is saying
that the treatment of Moodang is technically up to international standards,
but that doesn't eliminate the idea that allowing animals to
be on display for profit might not be ethical. It's
(29:21):
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,
(29:43):
it wouldn't be a mid twenty twenties press circuit without
an irrational New York Post attempt to cancel a baby hippo.
Speaker 8 (29:55):
Come on, could Moudang be canceled? Leaked videos show those
famed baby hippo biting zoo worker kind of mean. A
late September video shot inside months old Moodang's enclosure within
Thailand's Chamberry Zoo showed the feisty female coming at her
caretaker while he was attempting to hose her down. Commenting
(30:17):
on the widely circulated video, one person accused the animal
of being quote kind of mean. According to The Daily Mail.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Can we be serious?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
We can't be serious? And weirdly, this story might all
sound a little familiar because it repeats the same pattern
we saw with a different celebrity hippo god celebrity hippo
Jamie said on her podcast and was dead serious. There
was a second celebrity hippo. In twenty seventeen, the Cincinnati
(30:49):
Zoo found their star.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
In Fiona the Hippo, from premature baby to bona fide brand,
featured on merchandise, given her own.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Ice cream plate, Chunky Chunky Hippo, even a.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Campaign to make her Time magazine Person of the Year.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
In the world, including me watched as Fiona the Hippo recovered,
the zoo posted videos of her in neonatal intensive care,
being bottle fed, and even her first steps were documented
and posted to a massive public response. And Fiona's arc
was very similar to Mudang's. After she was finally safe
(31:28):
and healthy, attendance at the zoo swelled to record highs.
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
(31:53):
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
(32:14):
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.
(32:35):
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
(33:08):
can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm currently embroiled in
some serious snoopy drama.
Speaker 7 (33:14):
Ah no dogs hard.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
There are indeed two warring factions of snoopy fans online.
In one corner, an ardent leftist shout out to daily snoopies.
In the other, corner, an account which randomly endorsed Donald
Trump with an AI generated image of Snoopy shaking Charlie
Brown donald Trump's hand. Fuck You Snoopy Weekly. If the
(33:47):
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
(34:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
My name is Oliver, though most people online or otherwise
know me as doctor Wildlife. I'm a zoologist with sixteen
years of experience working in zoos and aquariums, starting as
a zoo keeper and eventually moving into management roles. I've
had the privilege of working with so many different animals.
And it's funny because people ask me that and they're like, well,
(34:51):
what have you worked with? And I think it's better
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.
(35:12):
But out of all of that, I would say my
biggest passion is science communication.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
So how did you first become interested in zoology? How
did you first sort of decide that this was going
to be your path?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
So funny enough, I actually was working towards being a
veterinarian because I feel like every kid, when you're young
and you're interested in animals, the whole world is like
be a vet, Be a vet, Be a vet, because
a lot of people don't understand there's a lot of
other animal careers out there. There's all sorts of things
that require different kinds of degrees or no degrees at all,
but it's very interested in being a vet. I grew
(35:45):
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
(36:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
One of the things that I was researching and hadn't
really looked into in some time before starting research for
this episode that I've seen come up around Moudng is
the argument around the ethical nature of zoos. It seems
like you've worked at a wide variety of places with animals,
at sanctuaries, at zoos, and elsewhere. From your perspective, because
(36:51):
I'm coming in pretty cold, what are your feelings around
that issue?
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Do you want me a single person that works in
the zoo, aquarium or sanctuary world that doesn't dream of
a reality where the animals under their care are out
in the wild and lush, thriving environments, being safe, secure,
not poached, and all these issues. Every single person is
of that mindset, and I think that's like a very
(37:18):
big common ground that a lot of people don't think about.
When you think about the world of zoos and aquariums
as having sides, I don't necessarily see it as sides.
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
(37:39):
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
(38:01):
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
(38:23):
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
(38:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
I noticed that the zoo that Mudang is at is
a for profit zoo. The zoo in Cincinnati that Fiona
is at is a nonprofit zoo. Are there different regulations
for a for profit versus a nonprofit?
Speaker 8 (39:11):
I just did.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
I didn't understand if that is a deciding factor of
the kind of care and animal might receive.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah, so funny enough. It ultimately isn't that big of
a difference just because of those factors. I used to
think so, like I used to be firmly against anything
for profit in the animal world, especially in zoos and aquariums,
because I'm like, Okay, these places are meant to be
educational institutions or doing conservation work, So what's a for
(39:39):
profit venture doing in this reality? But ultimately, something that
affects standards and such more is mainly what area of
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,
(40:03):
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
(40:26):
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
(40:47):
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
(41:08):
you really have to kind of look at every little aspect.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
I guess hypothetical situation that is completely true. Let's say,
so I have these complicated feelings around zoos. However, I
don't really feel comfortable telling my cousins with my nieces
and nephews to be like, don't bring your kids to
a zoo, don't teach your children about animals. I understand
that that's kind of a non starter. So if you
(41:33):
are a family with kids and you want them to
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.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Ooh, that is a fantastic question. I think the first
step would be to use the Association of Zoos and
Aquarium's website to check if a place that you or
intending on visiting as accredited or not. I think it
says like find Zoos and Aquariums. There's something very obvious,
but any case, you can look up every accredited animal facility.
(42:09):
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
(42:33):
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
(42:55):
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
(43:18):
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
(43:39):
meets higher standards.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and
talk about the role of social media and animal education.
So because you've been in this space for sixteen years now.
How have zoologists changed in the way that they use
the Internet to educate in the time you've been in
this field.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Oh, they've changed tremendously and I've all seeing a zoologists
also is using aquariums starting to be more informal about
how they educate. I think one of the most amazing
examples of that is Monterey Bay Aquariums social media presence
doing tweets, Like my favorite one that they did was
they tweeted just the ocean. That's all they said, like
(44:20):
the ocean, and it got like I say, millions of likes.
It's probably it's not that high, but thousands of likes
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,
(44:40):
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
(45:00):
keep saying it's the year of science on Twitter and Twitch.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
God, I hope so that would be very excise crossed.
I would love to see science get trash beg a
lot of other.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Things begging into the sky right now at that, I hope, so.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Sort of talking about these social media juggernaut animals that
I mean, I think that there's so many examples of this,
obviously pre dating social media that are more reliant on
marketing narratives, but on social media, the zoo does not
quite have control over the narrative as they once did.
(45:39):
How did you find out about MoU dang? And where
does your head go when you see an animal suddenly
become famous?
Speaker 3 (45:47):
No, it's so funny. I just feel like that little
hippo just appeared so suddenly that I can't exactly remember
where was the first place I saw them. The first
moment that I can like directly really remember is something
really funny. Was one of my friends sharing a video
that I don't know who the original creator of it
(46:07):
was and I can't remember what all was in the video,
but I it was moo as a kaiju like big
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
(46:29):
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
(46:53):
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
(47:15):
this hippo. Everybody knows who this hippo is.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
At this point, what can and should zoos and zoo
keepers do to protect their animals from this kind of
sudden surge of attention because it seemed like it took
it took the zoo a second to be like, well,
hold on, and they made all these adjustments, like they
made adjustments to make it safe for mudang. But in
the age of social media where this is apparently a risk,
(47:42):
what should professionals do to sort of be prepared for that?
And what would you recommend?
Speaker 3 (47:47):
You asking this question kind of like just in this
moment gave you this idea. It's like you almost need someone.
I feel like there should be a workshop for zoos
or some sort of training that it's like a preemptive.
It's kind of like what to do when your animal
goes viral? Kind of course, because you know, say you
start posting like Bob the Elephant. I'm just trying to
(48:10):
come up with something that doesn't maybe doesn't exist, but
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
(48:31):
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
(48:53):
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
(49:14):
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.
(49:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
There's like that level of entitlement, which I feel like
goes back to the argument about like, well, should zoos
exist if there's always going to be bad actors?
Speaker 3 (49:54):
You know, I've been at zoos that have the most
amazing signage in the whole world, and you know, do
everything they can for it, will recommend people for their
bad behavior when they catch them. But there's these people
that just don't care. And I always say that a
lot of that bad behavior continues because no one has
ever told them no in their entire lives, you know,
from the moment they were born.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
My last question is what can zoos and zoo keepers
kind of take away from the mudang osaga. From the
huge public response to this little baby hippo.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
I think the biggest thing is realizing that baby hippo
fans are about to be like, get their pitchforks up
in an instant, but please please hold them for a moment.
As I say this, I think zoo keepers and zoos
aquariums need to realize this baby hippo. It's gonna sound terrible.
She is not unique. And I say that and people
are like and she's unique in the sense that she
(50:47):
has her own personality. You know, she is unique in
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
(51:10):
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
(51:32):
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
(51:55):
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
(52:15):
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
(52:39):
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,
(53:03):
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.
(53:23):
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
(53:43):
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.
(54:05):
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
(54:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Oh Oliver, thank you so much for joining us and
for just speaking so thoughtfully. It's so nice to spend
a little time with you and really feel your passion
for what you do.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Absolutely, thank you so much for having me and being
interested in chatting.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
Thank you so much to Oliver for their time, and
you can follow their work more over at the link
in the description. So where does Moodang go from here?
If she's anything like Fiona the hippo, she'll be a
source of income for her zoo of residence for a
long time to come, and it's very possible that that
money will be used to preserve her species. But as
(55:21):
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?
Speaker 7 (55:38):
I hope so.
Speaker 2 (55:39):
But in the meantime, give my girl the hose anytime
she fucking wants it. Moodang, the baby Hippo. May You're
fifteen minutes, never end baby, And for your moment of fun,
here's a cursed mood Dang parody song from the Edge,
(56:00):
New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Long May she rain.
Speaker 8 (56:08):
You my little mood eh pig me Hippo and the
zoo thing.
Speaker 3 (56:12):
Yeah we know, because hey, you so famous.
Speaker 10 (56:14):
The most decision scene, I am less.
Speaker 4 (56:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (56:16):
We see the names on memes, on memes.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
Fans signing up just to hear them scream. It's all
memes on memes on names.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
It's too much fame for us.
Speaker 7 (56:24):
The Prey Little Being.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and
iHeart Rodeos. It is written, hosted, and produced by me
Jamie Lostis. Our executive producers are Sophie Lickterman and Robert Evans.
The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Our theme song.
Speaker 7 (56:46):
Is by Sad thirteen.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Voice acting is from Grant Crater and pet Shout outs
to our dog producer Anderson, my cat's flee and Casper,
and my pet rock Bert, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Bye.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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