Before Moo Deng, There Was ‘William Johnson Hippopotamus’

By 1939, Billy and his growing household were so prominent that they were transferred to Queens, New York, for the Globe’s Fair and showed at the Firestone pavilion. Billy, Hannah, and the Gumdrops proceeded to make media appearances in the 1940s and ’50s, including a 1952 photoshoot for Life publication including Gumdrop XII following his mommy and being soft toweled off after a bath.

It was not out of the normal when Harvey S. Firestone, owner of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, revealed that he was sending “Billy,” a live pygmy hippopotamus caught in West Africa, to the White Residence. Sources differ regarding when it was determined that “Billy” was short for “William Johnson Hippopotamus,” however the name stuck. Whatever desire the Coolidges had toward pets, there was absolutely nothing sentimental regarding the circumstances of Billy’s trip. Half-grown at 300 extra pounds, the hippo was captured after his rainforest home was destroyed by the advancement of Firestone’s rubber vineyards. Habitat loss is still the best danger dealing with wild pygmy hippos, said to number as few as 2,000 today.

Billy died in 1955 at around thirty years old, on the reduced end of a captive pygmy hippo’s lifespan today. The last Gumdrop was born to Hannah 5 months later on. In a birth statement in the Washington Message, a zookeeper said that Billy had “brought his work on throughout” by siring numerous offspring. Today, many captive pygmy hippos in the United States are come down from Billy.

“Child Hippo for Coolidge is Coming From Liberia,” the New York Times introduced in Might 1927. U.S. President Calvin Coolidge and his partner, Grace, were avowed pet enthusiasts who loaded the White Residence with pet cats, canines, and birds, to name a few species. Earlier in 1927, the Coolidges had made the challenging decision to send their raccoon, Rebecca– once saved from the Thanksgiving table– to live at a zoo. After Rebecca’s departure, the White House began to obtain even more unique pets as presents from supporters. A lot of these arrived the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., anyway, although the Coolidges continued to money the maintenance and check out of the animals they sent there. “Head of state Coolidge has actually provided the National Zoo with more pets, sent to him by his admirers, than have any of his precursors– Roosevelt alone excepted,” the New York Times wrote later in 1927.

Wild pygmy hippos have “nowhere else they can go” amid reducing environments, hippo professional Gabriella Flacke informed the BBC in 2024. The tale of Billy’s surge to popularity is a tip that our desire to see wild pets up close is nothing new, yet also of how much we have actually come in comprehending them.

The National Zoo offered or traded most of Billy’s offspring to various other zoos once they got to maturation. Billy became so effective– and lucrative– as a “stud” for breeding that the zoo presented a 2nd friend for him, Matilda, in 1940. This prompted probably the best heading of Billy’s lifetime, from the Washington Message: “Pygmy Hippo to End Up Being Polygamist.” Only a few of the 23 calves fathered by Billy were male. A high ratio of females to men is still observed in captive-born pygmy hippos, for factors unknown to researchers.

As soon as Coolidge was done awarding a medal to Lindbergh, he turned his focus to Billy, setting up a home for him at the National Zoo. As just the 8th pygmy hippo ever brought to the United States, Billy was a specific inquisitiveness and promptly attracted crowds. The pygmy hippo had been known to Westerners just given that the mid-19th century and was hardly ever observed in the wild due to its reluctant, nighttime routines, indicating that Billy’s first caretakers recognized little regarding his varieties.

Billy and his first mate, Hannah, were initially housed with lions. This is currently thought to have emphasized the hippos and played a function in the early fatalities of their first three children. After the fatality of the third calf bone, William Mann, the National Zoo supervisor, informed the paper that Hannah was “simply a bad mommy.”

As only the eighth pygmy hippo ever before brought to the United States, Billy was a specific curiosity and swiftly drew groups. The pygmy hippo had actually been understood to Westerners only given that the mid-19th century and was hardly ever observed in the wild due to its shy, nocturnal practices, indicating that Billy’s first caretakers recognized little about his species. The National Zoo marketed or traded most of Billy’s offspring to various other zoos once they reached maturation. Billy died in 1955 at around 30 years old, on the low end of a restricted pygmy hippo’s lifespan today. Today, most restricted pygmy hippos in the United States are descended from Billy.

Due to Billy’s health and popularity, the zoo chose to obtain a friend for him in 1929. “Prior to this, the version for numerous zoos was to exhibit a solitary sampling of an animal up until it passed away and after that change it with an additional,” Marguerite Roby, a Smithsonian photograph archivist, created in an account of Billy in 2012. “This venture into hippo husbandry introduced a new age of zoological parks as environments for the study of wildlife and pet conservation.”

Ever since she was born at Thailand’ sKhao Kheow Open Zoo in July 2024, Moo Deng, the pygmy hippopotamus, has actually captured public creativity, with site visitors to her home quadrupling considering that her birth. She has actually also raised the account of her varieties, the lesser-known– and more endangered– sheep-sized relative of the usual hippo. Moo Deng was not the very first miniature hippo to come to be a significant celebrity.