The people’s pygmy princess and female rage

Memes featuring Moo-Deng

Bibliographic Data

ID14712960
AuthorsSonja Žakula (0000-0003-0174-6771, Institute of Ethnography SASA, Serbia)
Year2025
Volume73
Issue2
Pages63-85
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGlasnik Etnografskog instituta (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0350-0861 • E-ISSN: 2334-8259
PublisherNational Library of Serbia (PUBLISHER • RS)
DOI10.2298/gei2502063z
LanguageEN
References cited13

Born in summer 2024 at Khao Kheow open zoo in Thailand, Moo-Deng (eng. ?Bouncy pork?) is a female baby pygmy hippopotamus whose photographs and videos have become a viral sensation online. She was chosen by zoo staff to promote awareness of her endangered species, but images of Moo-Deng quickly went viral, and owing to her expressive facial features, took on a life of their own, becoming memes and (more importantly) being turned into fan art by people around the globe. The fact that Moo-Deng is female (or, as the sometimes accompanying text puts it: ?just a girl?, fig.1)1 led to a somewhat unexpected association between the pygmy hippo and female rage. This paper will analyze memes and other visual content shared on Instagram, that features Moo-Deng, as ways of articulating female rage which becomes socially acceptable through visual association with a cute animal, as well as delve into the ways in which an animal?s facial expressions become interpretable and interpreted by a global human audience in the wider context of human-animal relations

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