the new breed of animal stars

Cute, chunky, and a little bit weird, the internet’s latest obsession, baby pygmy hippo Moo Deng, brought joy and humour to the world, right when we needed it. And as the dust settles on her viral fame (though her dewy glow remains flawless), Moo Deng, born in a Thai zoo in July, now joins the distinguished hall of fame of animals of the internet.

It’s not an easy road, internet stardom, as Moo Deng discovered. The zoo’s director was forced to urge the public to be gentle after videos emerged of visitors throwing shellfish and water at the tiny calf in attempts to wake her.

But the high was stratospheric. She inspired a skit on Saturday Night Live last weekend, in which comedian Bowen Yang transformed into the harassed hippo to draw parallels with pop superstar Chappell Roan, who recently cancelled performances after feeling overwhelmed by fans. Moo Deng won’t be the last of her kind. Here are six other viral animal stars we can’t forget.

PESTO THE PENGUIN

Baby penguin or pygmy hippo, the eternal (albeit recent) question over which is cuter, continues to divide. Would it be un-Australian to pick the latter? There’s no denying the other “chunky” star of the season is Melbourne Aquarium’s own Pesto. The nine-month-old king penguin is 23.5 kilograms – more than his parents combined. Pesto shuffled onto the scene just as we heard Sphen, one half of Sydney’s celebrated same-sex Gentoo penguin couple, had died, quickly taking up the mantle – or plumage – of Australia’s most famous penguin.

According to Sea Life’s education supervisor and one of Pesto’s keepers, Jacinta Early, his 15 minutes of fame may soon be up as he begins to shed his adolescent fluff in the next month. “He’s a child star right now.” Whether Pesto takes a permanent step away from the limelight, he already has millions of views, and counts pop star Katy Perry among his fans.

HARAMBE

The death of the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla in 2016 at the Cincinnati Zoo, after he grabbed a three-year-old boy who had climbed into his enclosure, prompted fierce debate about whether a keeper’s decision to use lethal force was appropriate. But it also spawned a mass of internet memes, sometimes bizarre tributes, and semi-ironic conspiracy theories, with many joking his death was an omen for a year of social and political upheaval.

Digital sociologist Naomi Smith, of the University of the Sunshine Coast, said Harambe had achieved “folkloric” status online, but also pointed to “some of the dangers of what humans consume, what are essentially wild animals for their own entertainment and gratification”.

GRUMPY CAT

Grumpy Cat’s owners said her appearance was caused by an underbite and feline dwarfism. It didn’t stop the internet from anthropomorphising her in a way that, Smith says, has led to animals, and cats especially, dominating the internet “since the beginning”. The cat, who lived in Arizona and whose real name was Tardar Sauce, exploded onto the scene in the early 2010s and soon became the internet’s favourite frowning feline. International TV appearances followed, and she starred in a Lifetime Christmas movie alongside Aubrey Plaza. Grumpy Cat died in 2019 aged seven.

DOGE

This one is tricky. OK, so the “Doge” meme refers less to one animal than a style of meme featuring a human-like dog, often with text in broken English in comic sans font. However, the pet behind the image most often used, a Shiba Inu named Kabosu, died in Japan in May this year.

Notably, the meme gave its name to Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency created as a joke by Australian Jackson Palmer. Since then, it has become a traded asset worth $US85 billion ($123 billion) at its peak. Smith said she had already noticed cryptocurrencies created using the names Moo Deng and Pesto the Penguin. “There is obviously a real cottage industry trying to financialise and profit from their images,” she said.

PEGGY AND MOLLY

Let’s not forget Australia’s favourite odd couple, Peggy, a Staffordshire bull terrier, and Molly, a magpie. The unlikely pals were first brought together by Queensland couple Juliette Wells and Reece Mortensen, who found Molly, a male magpie, in 2020 and nursed him back to health. But state law, which prohibits keeping wildlife as pets, meant the bird was taken away. A social media campaign, which saw Premier Steven Miles step in, led to Molly’s return, on the environment department’s condition they obtain proper animal care training and licences, and had “no ongoing commercial gain from the bird or its image”. In the latest twist, the Queensland government has asked the couple for a briefing on an upcoming animated series.

LOVE YOU STEPAN

The chill demeanour of Stepan, a cat whose love of relaxing with a glass of wine in the evening has earned him fans including Britney Spears, conceals a tragic story. Stepan’s owners filmed their journey in 2022 as they fled their home in Kharkiv in Ukraine for France following the Russian invasion. That year, Stepan’s multimillion-follower accounts raised about $14,500 for animals affected by the war. He has since returned to Ukraine, where posts alongside “girlfriend” Stepania suggest he is doing well.

Smith said viral animal stars would continue to provide welcome distraction as long as global conflict and climate events meant the world continued to be “a really messed-up place”.

“There’s a lot of relief from just looking at something round and cute on the internet for five minutes,” she said, “and feeling a bit better about the state of the world”.

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