Moo Deng and Pesto the Penguin are the perfect antidote to your existential terror

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It’s been a rough year. Actually, it’s been a rough decade. If you’re below a certain age, chances are it’s been a pretty rough life, with no sign that things are going to pick up any time soon.

Every time I open my phone and look at the news or social media, it’s like choosing to blast myself in the face with the most poisonous radiation known to man. Everything is sad and terrible all the time, and it always has been – with one exception. The one balm to our social ills since the days of Lolcats and dramatic chipmunk: cute animals going viral on the internet.

Right now, we’re living in a golden age of animal cuteness, and despite my rough and manly façade, I am not immune to them. If I’m being honest, they’re probably the only thing keeping me going most days. The star of the show at the moment is Moo Deng, a two-month-old pygmy hippo at Thailand’s Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi, who has taken the internet by storm with her unhinged, adorable behaviour.

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Moo Deng does it all: she sleeps, she chomps, she blows snot bubbles out of her nose. She’s furious all the time, and she sleeps constantly. She hates baths but she’s somehow always extremely wet, even by hippo standards. She hassles her keepers and her mother by butting them with her tiny little head, and that’s fine, because she has a free pass from me to do whatever she wants. She’s a tiny baby. She’s a diva. She’s you, she’s me. She’s the only good thing happening in the world at the moment. She’s Moo Deng.

The internet loves Moo Deng, and why wouldn’t it? Her name means “bouncy pork” and she looks like a Funko Pop. Pictures and videos of her screaming at her keepers as they make futile attempts to bathe her have spread like internet wildfire, with scores of young people finding something relatable about a tiny, helpless animal who looks perpetually traumatised and mad at the world (for some reason). People are making memes, they’re making T-shirts, they’re doing latte art – we’re about two weeks away from Moo Deng-branded Covid tests.

Unfortunately, as with every good thing that happens on the internet, it must be met with an equal and opposite reaction that makes you question the existence of a loving God. Visitors to the zoo have been splashing water at Moo Deng, and even throwing objects at her, in order to prompt the kind of behaviour from her that they’ve seen online. In response, the zoo has had to put up warning signs in Thai, English, and Chinese advising people to not be the absolute worst. They’ve also set up security cameras in Moo Deng’s habitat, and even threatened legal action.

Here at the Independent, our articles are subject to strict legal checks, as well as our own internal code of conduct to ensure fairness and civility in all we do. So unfortunately, I can’t say what I think should happen to people who see a being as pure and innocent as Moo Deng and think to themselves “I should throw something at that”. They aren’t fit to be in society. Given half a chance, they’d scribble a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

Luckily for us, Moo Deng isn’t the only cute animal I can’t shut up about in the group chat. Pesto is a nine-month-old king penguin at the Sea Life Melbourne aquarium in Australia, who has caught the attention of people who don’t have a lot going on in their personal lives the world over for two important reasons: he’s very fluffy, and he’s very chonky.

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Standing at three feet tall and weighing around 50 pounds, Pesto is massive even by king penguin standards (most penguins his age are only around 35 pounds). He eats 25 fish a day, because he’s a hungry boy, and he looms over the other penguins like the possibility of Trump winning the next election. His fur coat and vaguely suspicious expression make him look like if Noele Gordon was an Animorph, and I love him.

There’s a temptation to pit the two against each other, but the fact is that we just can’t afford to at the moment. The world is falling apart, and if the internet wishes to grace us with two adorable animals to think about instead of whatever’s going on in the Middle East, then it’s on us to appreciate them both.

People are going to tell you that enjoying the exploits of cute animals is “peak millennial behaviour”, and make edgy jokes about Moo Deng “being Harambe’d” for easy shock value, but here’s the thing: you don’t need those people in your life. There’s no rule that says you have to pretend to be jaded about every little thing to seem cool to teenagers on the internet. There’s a lot going on right now, and I’d much rather Moo Deng and Pesto went viral than some stupid thing one of the Paul brothers did.

We all need something to take the edge off, and if that thing happens to take the form of a sassy hippopotamus and an enormous bird, then so be it. We’re a generation in crisis, and if reposting a picture of Moo Deng screaming in a pantomime of mock anguish and saying “that me” is how your coping mechanism manifests, then good on you. Your sense of existential terror is no match for Pesto and Moo Deng – for a little while, at least.