ross geller lover

Moo Deng shows avoidance, threat displays and stress around her keepers that are constantly man-handling her, blasting her with a hose and harassing her. The enclosure is mostly concrete, which is horrible for her soft feet. There looks to be some substrate but there doesn’t seem to be any areas for wallowing or deep water wading.

There’s also very easy access of this hippo to the public with no places to hide. I’d love if someone could shed more light on the enclosures but from what I’ve seen it’s not great.

Also the free contact and forcing into tubs that the keepers do is only going to create an avoidant and potentially aggressive and dangerous Pygmy hippo.

But the public happily overlook that because she’s cute. It’s a similar attitude with seals too.

All the animals have pretty wide open enclosures compared to zoos I've been to in the US. Khao Kheow is farther away from the city so it's in the jungle with very large enclosures. The pygmy hippos have a smaller enclosure than the African hippopotamus but at the time they only had the one adult living there. If I'm being honest, the pygmy hippo's enclosure is the only one that seemed small. I'm sure they will expand it now that the hippos have become a big draw to the zoo.

They've also reduced the amount of time that visitors can see the hippos to 5 minutes per person, because of the influx of tourists, and they don't want to stress the animals. It's on their facebook page, in Thai

None of the animals appear to be malnourished and have plenty of room to run around. Maybe you should visit or do any research before you get mad about it or make claims about the horrible inadequate conditions of a zoo in another country.

Here's a photo of me at the hippopotamus enclosure so you can tell the scale. (I'm standing on a bridge in the foreground, about 15 feet over the water, but hippos are really huge. He's got plenty of room.)

That’s great that they have large habitats for them but I’m not talking about their other enclosures. We’re focusing on Pygmy Hippos.

The habitat doesn’t have its own water source and it seems that the keepers are required to be constantly hosing and filling up buckets to keep their skin wet.

However wild Pygmy Hippos and ones housed in facilities that have access to deep water will regularly wade, rest and play in it.

This removes agency for the animals, who have to rely on their keepers for something as critical as keeping their skin wet. They also have no areas for mud wallowing and very minimal tree coverage.

And even if the habitat was perfect, it still doesn’t justify completely inappropriate handling of Pygmy Hippos.

- these two screenshots are when the keeper laughs and smacks Moo Deng on the rump, which she clearly startles from and runs away from him.

You can see the whole video here

And the “explanation” for this is that it’s supposed to be conditioning her to be handled.

No, this is not how you desensitise or handle wild large herbivores. Encouraging biting for your TikTok and then hitting her to make her go away are clear signs of inexperience and ignorance in handling your animals.

Hitting to the point of a startle and flight response teaches her that her keepers are unpredictable and scary. They don’t seem to respect her space, even when she’s resting. And she doesn’t relax unless they’re not too close to her.

People will bend over backwards trying to justify this so it doesn’t ruin their dopamine fix of the day, but it’s absolutely not okay.

I’m coming at this from the perspective of someone who worked in zoo animal husbandry and welfare for many years and worked in the Asia Pacific region. Animal welfare standards are different there, that’s just a fact.

I am not posting this to shame, I just think it’s important for people to understand that Moo Deng’s habitat isn’t ideal and that she isn’t just “mad” for the sake of it - she’s showing aggression because she feels threatened.

She shows avoidance and stress around her keepers and that’s not normal and can have long term implications for her behaviour as she grows older.

One more thing about the guests: yes it’s good they’re minimising the time people are around her but that still means a constant rotation of people crowding her enclosure all day.

And the zoo throwing up their hands and wagging their finger at guests for throwing things at her is ridiculous when they have the power to install a better barrier to keep her safe and keep the guests at a further distance. They won’t do that, because that ruins the guest experience and they can’t have that because that’ll lose them money.

So when women were banned from voting it was because they felt like women? Before a woman is denied an abortion, do they ask if they feel like a woman first? When little girls are banished to suffer in menstrual huts, it's because they felt "warm and brave"?

If you like to wear makeup? Okay but it's not feminist to do so.

If you like to shave? Okay but it's not feminist.

Everytime a woman speaks on how these things are damaging to women as a class you always get people whining and crying about their individual choices.

This isn't even talking about why no one takes even a second to question why they want to shave, and why do they want to wear makeup.

If everything is feminist than nothing is.

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