Grass Mud Horse

Grass Mud Horse
Bolivian Alpaca aka "Grass Mud Horse"
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
Literal meaning	grass mud horse
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Cǎonímǎ Bopomofo ㄘㄠˇ ㄋㄧˊ ㄇㄚˇ Gwoyeu Romatzyh Tsao Ni Maa Wade–Giles Ts'ao3 ni2 ma3 Tongyong Pinyin Cǎonímǎ Yale Romanization Tsau3 ni2 ma3 MPS2 Tsǎu-ní-mǎ Hakka Romanization Chhó nài mâ Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Chóu nàih máh Jyutping Cou2 nai4 maa5 Canton Romanization Cou2 nai4 ma5 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Chháu-nî-má Tâi-lô Tsháu-nî-má

The Grass Mud Horse or Cǎonímǎ (草泥马) is a Chinese Internet meme widely used as a form of symbolic defiance of the widespread Internet censorship in China. It is a play on the Mandarin words cào nǐ mā (肏你妈), literally, "fuck your mother", and is one of the so-called 10 mythical creatures created in a hoax article on Baidu Baike in early 2009 whose names form obscene puns. It has become an Internet chat forum cult phenomenon in China and has garnered worldwide press attention, with videos, cartoons and merchandise of the animal (which is said to resemble the alpaca), having appeared.

The Caonima, literally "Grass Mud Horse", is supposedly a species of alpaca. The name is similar to a profanity (Chinese: /; pinyin: ), which translates as "fuck your mother". The comparison with the "animal" name is not an actual homophone: the two terms have the same consonants and vowels with different tones, and are represented by different characters.

According to the original, anonymous article from Baidu Baike, Grass Mud Horses originate from an area known as the "Mahler Gobi" Desert (马勒戈壁, Mǎlè Gēbì, which resembles the Chinese characters 妈了个屄, māle ge bī, meaning "your mother's fucking cunt"). Some variants of the animal are known as "Fertile Grass Mud Horses" (沃草泥马, Wò Cǎonímǎ, which resembles 我肏你妈, Wǒ cào nǐ mā, meaning "I fuck your mother"). The Grass Mud Horse can only eat fertile grass (沃草, wò cǎo, which resembles 我肏, Wǒ cào, meaning "I fuck!" or simply "Fuck!"). Other subspecies are known as "Crazy/Violent/Insane Grass Mud Horses" (狂草泥马, Kuáng Cǎonímǎ), which are considered the "kings" of the Caonima. The initial image found in the original Baidu Baike article was a zebra, but was replaced with an alpaca in subsequent revisions.