Role in a TV series, meeting with the Thai Prime Minister, price estimated at half a million euros… no we are not talking about a famous footballer or a Hollywood star, but a buffalo , whose CV makes people envious.
Ko, a 1.5 tonne water buffalo, has become a celebrity in Thailand after recently being sold for a record price of 18 million baht, or around 460,000 euros.
The bulky bovine, full name Ko Muang Phet, was known in Thai farming circles as a breeding animal, but it was its high-price sale last week that established its fame.
Standing 1.80 m tall, this four-year-old buffalo, originally from the western province of Phetchaburi, weighs about three times more than the average of its congeners, but it is above all its albinism that makes it extraordinary.
Ko has everything to become a real star, so much so that he made an appearance in an episode of the very popular local soap opera "Sound From The Field Of Love", before being invited to the government headquarters on Wednesday, where the Prime Thai minister Srettha Thavisin, at 1.92 m tall, posed alongside him.
“I didn’t know we had such beautiful buffalo”
“I didn’t know we had such beautiful buffalo,” Srettha Thavisin told the assembled reporters, carefully tapping one of the creature’s huge curved horns.
The Buffalo Breeders' Association has asked the government to promote these animals as a tool of "soft power", he explained in a message published on X.
VIDEO: Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin takes the bull by the horns as he welcomes an unusual visitor to his offices -- an enormous white buffalo known as Ko Muang Phet, that recently sold for $500,000.
pic.twitter.com/2Ffz64o2wR
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 21, 2024
Water buffalo, also called wild Asian buffalo, are omnipresent in the Thai countryside.
They are valued as sturdy and reliable farm animals, and albino specimens are particularly valuable due to their rarity.
Last year, a farmer in the northern province of Phitsanulok sold his 1.4-ton bull for more than 1.33 million euros, according to several media.
“Thai people were once close to agriculture and buffaloes, but our current lifestyle has taken us away from them,” Jintanat Limtongkul, Ko's owner, told reporters at government headquarters.
The latter has committed to bringing four giant buffaloes to meet tourists at Khao San Road, a hotspot for nightlife in Bangkok, next month for Songkran.
During this party which celebrates the Thai New Year, thousands of revelers take to the streets and engage in giant water gun battles.