I Met Moo Deng in AR Using Snap’s New Spectacles

Earlier this month, a woman appeared on my TikTok For You page who had flown all the way from the US to Thailand solely to see the internet-famous pygmy hippopotamus Moo Deng in real life. The rambunctious little nibbler has stolen hearts across the world, so it’s no surprise that Moo Deng has attracted visitors to the zoo where he lives in Chonburi.

I, too, met Moo Deng after traveling a long distance – in this case from my home in the UK to Hawaii, where Qualcomm is currently holding its Snapdragon summit. Throughout the week Qualcomm and its partners show demos of its current and future technologies. One of those partners is Snap, which brought its new Snapchat specs that CNET Editor-at-Large Scott Stein first tried out last month.

Augmented reality headsets, which allow you to see engage with digital content as well as the world around you, are having a real moment right now. This year alone we’ve see the consumer launch of the Apple Vision Pro (which creates augmented reality with the help of cameras), as well as the unveiling of the new Snap Glasses and Meta’s Orion Glasses. The resurgence in face-worn tech, after the death of Google Glass and the original Snapchat Spectacles several year, is being powered by companies such as Qualcomm, which are combining the latest chip tech with developments in generative AI to make them more useful and fun.

Meeting Moo Deng couldn’t exactly be described as useful, but it was certainly fun. Thanks to a dedicated Snapchat lens, I was able to pick up Moo Deng and put her on the floor in front of me, before reaching out to pet her (she responded with love hearts). I could also put a hat on her and feed her lettuce. It wasn’t exactly the same as seeing her in the flesh, but at least I was able to pet her without getting bit. 

It occurred to me that experiences like this could be an ideal compromise for people to learn about rare breeds and support conservation efforts without traveling across the world to do so. They provide a way for an unlimited number of people to have a safe and cute interaction with internet-famous animal without causing any stress or harm to that animal.

It might sound like a ridiculous parasocial quirk that anyone would want to see an animal they’d seen on the internet in real life at all, but plenty do. Even Olivia Rodrigo, when she took her Guts tour to Melbourne, Australia this month, stopped by the zoo to meet Pesto, the giant baby penguin who has spawned many memes. 

Over the past few months the algorithm has repeatedly served me up a couple of rescued sea otter pups who are currently residing in Vancouver Aquarium. When I’m in town in a couple of months I plan to stop by, hopefully with my two-year-old niece, and see them. She already tries to pet my cat through a phone screen, which just goes to show that the urge to interact with the animals you see via the internet is universal, even among those too young to understand what it is yet.