Baby monkey ‘Punch’ drags a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa Zoo, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.
Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
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Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
If you’ve been on the internet in the past few weeks, chances are you’ve seen him: a tiny gray-brown monkey dragging a big, stuffed orangutan around Japan’s Ichikawa Zoo.
His name? Punch-kun, or Punch for short.
His story? Early abandonment by his mother, careful treatment from local zookeepers and instant social media fame.
But are all the (human) primates jumping to Punch’s defense justified? And what’s normal for Japanese macaque society, anyway? To find out, NPR’s Katia Riddle chats with psychology professor and animal expert Lauren Robinson.
Interested in more animal science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.
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This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn and Arundathi Nair. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez.