the essential
Having become a sensation on social networks, the baby pygmy hippopotamus Moo Deng “predicted” the victory of one of the two candidates for the American presidential election.
While pollsters are undecided, Moo Deng has already made his choice. For this baby hippopotamus star of social networks, Donald Trump will win the American presidential election. At least that's what the animal predicted from its zoo in Thailand, when it was offered two different meals to decide between the two neck-and-neck opponents in the polls.
The four-month-old female hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her antics, inspiring merchandise and memes, and managing to quadruple ticket sales at her zoo in Khao Kheow, central Thailand. Two meals made of carved fruits and each revealing an inscription were offered to Moo Deng, whose name means “bouncing pig” in Thai.
A real phenomenon
One featured the name of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, the second that of former Republican President Donald Trump, according to a video posted on X by the zoo. The animal chose to taste the meal bearing the name of the 78-year-old Republican. Moo Deng, whose species is endangered, has become particularly popular in the United States, to the point of being played by comedian Bowen Yang in a sketch on “Saturday Night Live”, a cult American television program broadcast by NBC.
The channel's “Tonight Show” even broadcast the results of a humorous poll on voting intentions for the presidential election at the end of September, giving Moo Deng the winner with 93% of the votes against Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. According to the opinion polls considered the most serious, the Democrat and the Republican are in a mini-handkerchief in each key state likely to swing the vote this Tuesday.
