From Moo Deng to Pesto the Penguin: Do our viral animal friends inspire conservation or just clicks?

In 2024, a heartwarming trend emerged on TikTok, with a cute and oversized penguin named Pesto capturing people's hearts and attention. This Emperor penguin was born a normal, healthy chick at the Melbourne Sea Life Aquarium, but it just kept growing and growing.

By six months old, Pesto was already much larger than its parents, Hudson and Tango. At nine months, it weighed over 20 kilograms, more than the combined weight of its parents. Pesto’s rapid growth has surprised its keepers. Since making its public debut in April, Pesto has attracted over 1.9 billion views on TikTok. Typing "pesto" into the app's search bar will bring up the penguin first, not the sauce.

Pesto's rise to fame came just months before the playful baby hippo, Moo Deng, at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand, also went viral. Moo Deng’s antics quickly won hearts online. Pesto and Moo Deng are not the first animals to become social media stars. People also remember Doug the Pug (the most followed pug on the internet) and Grumpy Cat (the perpetually frowning dwarf cat).

However, those animals were domestic pets, while Pesto and Moo Deng are wild, albeit captive, animals. Both Khao Kheow Zoo and the Melbourne Sea Life Aquarium have reported an increase in visitors due to the animals’ internet fame. Michaela Smale, a senior keeper at Melbourne Sea Life Aquarium, told 9news.com.au in September, "We've seen an increase in social traffic, web traffic and certainly visitation. People are coming to Melbourne not just for shows and music and coffee, they're coming to see Pesto."

Moo Deng’s popularity has forced the zoo to limit visitor time to five minutes and erect signs asking them not to throw things at her. Social media users have expressed concerns that the baby hippo may be mistreated or induced to perform for online attention. The animal rights organization PETA has publicly expressed concerns about Moo Deng's quality of life and called for the zoo to prioritize conservation efforts to protect animals in the wild. The zoo insists the baby hippo is receiving the best possible care.

Professor James Watson, a conservation scientist at the University of Queensland, told 9news.com.au that zoos play an important role in exposing people, especially children, to wildlife, but trying to anthropomorphize wildlife for entertainment can be a step too far. Watson said, "Any animal in captivity, a wild animal, is in an environment it doesn't really want to be in. I can see there are benefits in terms of conservation and wildlife, but it has to be considered in context."

He stated that one of the conundrums of conservation is calculating the cost-effectiveness of maintaining wildlife biodiversity, ensuring species survival and population control, alongside the quality of life of individual animals. Zoos highlight the conflict between animal welfare movements and conservation movements. He said, "The science is very clear that when people love nature, when they actually experience nature and get joy from it, they will dedicate themselves to conservation. Zoos have played a really important role in that for a long time."

But he cautioned that the advent of incredible video footage and photos means that zoos are no longer the only way people can experience wildlife, and we should be empowered to question why zoo keepers keep animals in captivity. "If it's simply for entertainment, people can make their own judgment as to whether that is cruel."