Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)
Shining in the morning sunlight, Moo Deng the pygmy hippo plops to the ground in her enclosure. She is seemingly unbothered by her rapid rise to social media stardom.
The two-month-old pint-sized creature went viral recently after her handlers posted videos of her on TikTok and Instagram from her home at a zoo in Chon Buri, Thailand.
Her cute expressions and playful frolicking racked up millions of views and have lured thousands of visitors wanting to witness her in action. Hundreds of people queued at the zoo just to see her for five minutes.
Moo Deng – whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork” – is now a poster child for the endangered pygmy hippo.
Native to West Africa, the pygmy hippo is threatened by human activities such as logging, mining, and poaching.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, there are only about 2,000 to 2,500 pygmy hippos left in the world.
Answer: logging, mining and poaching
