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.”
