The viral monkey Punch is beginning to toughen up as he stepped in to defend his girlfriend from another monkey at the zoo.<\/p>\n
Punch has gone viral worldwide<\/a> after clips showed him clutching a plush toy for comfort following rejection from his biological mother.<\/p>\n At first, the Japanese macaque had a hard time getting used to life around other monkeys, but he\u2019s since grown quite a bit, gaining a \u201cbodyguard\u201d<\/a> and even a love interest.<\/p>\n Article continues after ad<\/p>\n In a new video making rounds, Punch\u2019s girlfriend Moe<\/a> was being harassed by another monkey, but Punch stepped in to save the day.<\/p>\n Punch defends his girlfriend from rival monkey<\/p>\n Uploaded on March 21, the video shows Punch and Moe playing and him going down a cliff and waiting for his girlfriend to join him.<\/p>\n Instead, she appeared to come under attack by another monkey who jumped on top of her and started fighting.<\/p>\n At this point, Punch had a decision to make: go back up and fight for her, or go about his day and spend the rest of his life with an Ikea plush toy.<\/p>\n Article continues after ad<\/p>\n Article continues after ad<\/p>\n Instead of backing down, Punch climbed up and despite being out-matched by his larger foe, was able to knock his enemy off the cliff before being embraced by Moe.<\/p>\n The video was shared on X<\/a> by a user documenting Punch\u2019s ongoing viral<\/a> adventures. \u201cHe\u2019s usually the one getting rescued by Moe-chan, but this time it\u2019s Punch-kun\u2019s turn to be the hero,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no telling where Punch\u2019s journey will take him next, but it\u2019s clear that he\u2019s grown a lot more comfortable with other monkeys since joining the enclosure at the Ichikawa City Zoological and Botanical Garden.<\/p>\n Article continues after ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The viral monkey Punch is beginning to toughen up as he stepped in to defend his girlfriend from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-570926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}