There’s A Scientific Reason We’re Obsessed With Moo Deng, The Viral Baby Hippo
HuffPost
From her chubby cheeks to her viral fame, there's more to Moo Deng's cuteness than meets the eye.
If you have been online recently, then you know we are all Moo Deng and she is us.
The two-month-old pygmy hippo has become a viral internet sensation and a popular tourist attraction. Moo Deng was born in July at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand, but she already has thousands of new admirers clamoring to catch a glimpse of her tiny round face and chubby, pink cheeks.
The zoo told Reuters that it usually gets only 800 visitors during the rainy season, but it is now getting 3,000 to 4,000 people on weekdays, with most waiting to see Moo Deng, whose name means “bouncy pork” in Thai. The infant pygmy hippo has become so popular that visitors can now only see her for five minutes on weekends, the zoo said.
Why can’t we get enough of Moo Deng? There’s a scientific reason we would “kill and die to protect” her, as one person put it online.
“She is designed to be cute, and we are designed by evolution to find her to be cute and want to hug her, pet her,” said research scientist Daniel Kruger, who studies evolutionary psychology at the University of Michigan and the State University of New York at Buffalo.
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