The 23-month-old has become a media star with newspapers and television stations throwing the spotlight on the tiny bovine at a farm near Dhaka.

Pictures of Rani on social media platforms have set off a tourist frenzy. Despite a nationwide transport shutdown because of record Covid infections and deaths, people are flocking in rickshaws to the farm in Charigram, 30km southwest of Dhaka.

Rani is 66cm long and weighs only 26kg, but the owners say it is 10cm shorter than the smallest cow in the Guinness World Records.

MA Hasan Howlader, manager of the Shikor Agro farm, used a tape measure to show dozens of onlookers how Rani dwarfs her closest rival Manikyam, a cow in the Indian state of Kerala that currently holds the world record.

According to Guinness World Records, Manikyam, of the Vechur breed, was 61cm high in June 2014. Howlader said Guinness had promised to make a decision in three months.

Rani is a Bhutti, or Bhutanese, cow, which is prized for its meat in Bangladesh. The other Bhuttis on the farm are twice Rani’s size.

“More than 15,000 people have come to see Rani in the past three days alone,” Howlader added. “Honestly speaking, we are tired.”