Haggis is a Scottish pudding prepared by cooking sheep organs inside the animal’s stomach, in which it is also served.
It’s known as an acquired taste.
Last week, though, Scotland produced a more appealing Haggis: a tiny, mud-colored pygmy hippopotamus calf named after the infamous dish, who was born on Oct. 30 to her proud pygmy parents, Otto and Gloria.
As news spread of Haggis’s birth, many began drawing comparisons to Moo Deng, a pygmy hippo living some 6,000 miles away in Thailand who also happens to be named after food (her name roughly translates to “bouncy pork”). From the moment her birth was announced in July, Moo Deng captured hearts and minds around the world via widely shared videos and images revealing her plump body, her propensity for biting (which the zoo said was a result of teething) and her occasional outbursts of screaming.
On Monday, in its official announcements of Haggis’s birth, the Edinburgh Zoo attempted to stoke a rivalry among the two tiny (and rare) members of the Hippopotamidae family. On the zoo’s website, an article was headlined “Moo Deng Who?” and on X the zoo’s staff went even further, writing: “Moo Deng? Who deng? Introducing… Haggis.”
Later in the day, the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chon Buri, Thailand, where Moo Deng lives, responded to a post about Haggis on X that had tried to fan the flames, saying “They’re both adorable.”
That response, along with a great deal of (mostly playful) feedback from various users on social media, led the Edinburgh Zoo to issue a notes-app style apology on X, which read, in part: “We were wrong to pit Haggis and Moo Deng against each other. There is space in this world for two beautiful pygmy hippo divas and we should celebrate them all.”
That a second baby pygmy hippo rocketed to internet fame so quickly could lead some to question the rarity of the species, or possibly prompt a bit of eye rolling, but some zookeepers see the outsize attention as a way to make people aware of how rare and endangered the animals are.
According to the Edinburgh Zoo, Haggis has a sibling, Amara, who was born in 2021 and moved to the London Zoo in 2023 as part of a breeding program for the species. But there are only 2,500 pygmy hippos living in the wild in West Africa, where poaching and habitat loss have made them an endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.
Despite all the attention, Edinburgh Zoo’s pygmy hippo house will be closed to the public for the time being, as the staff continues to monitor Haggis’s development. But the zoo is already running a fund-raising contest in which the winner will receive a private audience with Haggis. And Jonny Appleyard, the zoo’s hoofstock team leader, suggested in a statement that the days of privacy for the baby animal may not last for long.
“While Thailand’s Moo Deng has become a viral global icon, it is important to remember that pygmy hippos are incredibly rare,” he said. “It is great to have our own little ambassador right here in Edinburgh to connect with our visitors and help raise awareness of the challenges the species face in the wild.”
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