WHO: The cutest adult pygmy hippo you ever did see.
WHAT: A new arrival at the Houston Zoo.
WHY IT’S SO GREAT: One of the more wholesome global phenomena we’ve enjoyed over the past few months has been the emergence of Moo Deng, baby pygmy hippo and viral sensation. The playful, charismatic li’l beast is a native of eastern Thailand, where she lives at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo. She has a warm, friendly-looking face and adorable rolls along her neck, and she has helped introduce the very existence of the pygmy hippo—a species with only about 2,500 individuals left in the wild—to the wider world. She is a pure and good thing in these unusual times. And she can go straight to heck, because Texas has a pygmy hippo of its own now: Meet Akobi, the 477-pound creature waddling his way around the Houston Zoo.
Akobi, unlike Moo Deng, is a grown-up pygmy hippo, born in 2020 and coming from—as with so many newly minted Texans—the state of California. He’s come to Texas not in search of wide-open spaces and big blue skies, or low taxes and relatively cheaper housing, but, instead, a lady pygmy hippo with whom to help propagate the endangered species by producing additional roly-poly li’l guys. This future mate is not currently in Texas, but the Houston Zoo is being a good wingman and actively seeking a partner for Akobi (whose name means “firstborn” in the Yoruba language, which is spoken in some of the same parts of West Africa where the species is native) as part of a breeding program. In the wild, pygmy hippos enjoy playing the field, but in captivity, they often mate for life, making this search of paramount importance to the four-and-a-half-year-old fella. His expected lifespan could keep him around until the year 2075, assuming any of us make it that long.
While he’s on the prowl, Akobi is living in a zoo habitat that keeps him in view of visitors, according to the Houston Chronicle, and he enjoys exploring the space and largely ignoring the humans who come to gaze upon his magnificent, shiny hippo form. We wish him all the best in his search for a special lady friend, and we will heartily congratulate him and the as-yet-undetermined partner on their eventual nuptials as soon as those occur. Moo Deng who?
