The internet has a new favorite little guy. His name is Punch (or Punch-kun, as he’s Japanese), a young macaque monkey living at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan. Like pygmy hippo Moo Deng or fluffy penguin Pesto, Punch is a baby animal who has captured social media’s attention (even DeuxMoi) thanks to his adorable looks and specific personality. But there are a couple of misconceptions about Punch and his toy that we should probably clear up—and the good news is, he’s doing better than you might think.
Here’s a brief explainer.
Punch was born in July 2025 and rejected by his mother.
Punch’s mother, a first-time mom, did not care for him after his birth, so he was raised by two humans at the Ichikawa City Zoo with the intent of reintroducing him to the zoo’s troop of macaques, a process that seems to have started in January. Matt Lovatt, director for the UK’s Trentham Monkey Forest, told the BBC that rejection by parents is rare among macaques, but that males of the species do as much caretaking as the females, so Punch still has a good chance of integrating into the troop and developing normally, even without his mom.
He went viral for loving his comfort toy.
Since baby macaques cling to their mothers for comfort, Punch’s handlers gave him a toy monkey —a stuffed orangutan from Ikea—to bond with and practice grooming. (If you’re interested in learning more about primate behavior, there’s a famous study about baby monkeys bonding with fuzzy mother surrogates instead of the prickly mother surrogate that would feed them.)
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Punch and his surrogate mother went viral and visitors flocked to the zoo to see him.
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