Before Moo Deng, There Was ‘William Johnson Hippopotamus’

03.12.2024 - 22:53 / atlasobscura.com

Ever since she was born at Thailand’s Khao Kheow Open Zoo in July 2024, Moo Deng, the pygmy hippopotamus, has captured public imagination, with visitors to her home quadrupling since her birth. She has also raised the profile of her species, the lesser-known—and more endangered—sheep-sized cousin of the common hippo. But Moo Deng was not the first mini hippo to become a major celebrity.

“Baby Hippo for Coolidge is Coming From Liberia,” the New York Times announced in May 1927. U.S. President Calvin Coolidge and his wife, Grace, were avowed animal lovers who filled the White House with cats, birds, and dogs, among other species. Earlier in 1927, the Coolidges had made the difficult decision to send their raccoon, Rebecca—once rescued from the Thanksgiving table—to live at a zoo. After Rebecca’s departure, the White House began to receive even more exotic animals as gifts from supporters. Many of these wound up at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., anyway, although the Coolidges continued to visit and fund the upkeep of the critters they sent there. “President Coolidge has presented the National Zoo with more animals, sent to him by his admirers, than have any of his predecessors—Roosevelt alone excepted,” the New York Times wrote later in 1927.

So it was not out of the ordinary when Harvey S. Firestone, founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, announced that he was sending “Billy,” a live pygmy hippopotamus captured in West Africa, to the White House. Sources differ as to when it was decided that “Billy” was short for “William Johnson Hippopotamus,” but the name stuck. Whatever fondness the Coolidges had toward animals, there was nothing sentimental about the circumstances of Billy’s journey. Half-grown at 300 pounds, the hippo was captured after his rainforest home was destroyed by the encroachment of Firestone’s rubber plantations. Habitat loss is still the greatest threat facing wild pygmy hippos, said to number as few as 2,000 today.

By coincidence, Billy arrived in Washington, D.C., on the same day as aviator Charles Lindbergh after his own transatlantic voyage. But once Coolidge was done awarding a medal to Lindbergh, he turned his attention to Billy, setting up a home for him at the National Zoo. As only the eighth pygmy hippo ever brought to the United States, Billy was an especial curiosity and quickly drew crowds. The pygmy hippo had been known to Westerners only since the mid-19th century and was rarely observed in the wild due to its shy, nocturnal habits, meaning that Billy’s first caretakers knew little about his species. Despite this, Billy adjusted well to captivity, and was described in the New York Times as playing with his keeper, “frisky as a dog. Even the antics of the