{"id":306732,"date":"2026-02-28T16:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/306732\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T16:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:37:08","slug":"punch-the-monkey-deserves-better-and-we-do-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/306732\/","title":{"rendered":"Punch the monkey deserves better. And we do too"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve been on the internet in the past week, you know about Punch, the 7-month old Japanese macaque whose sad tale of abandonment and loneliness has spread around the world via video clips and still photos of the baby snow monkey being roughed up by other macaques and turning to his surrogate parent, a stuffed orangutan<\/a>, for comfort. Punch\u2019s mother rejected him shortly after he was born last July at Japan\u2019s Ichikawa City Zoo, and he was hand-reared by keepers. Baby macaques generally clutch tightly to their mother\u2019s body to build muscle strength, zookeeper Kosuke Shikano<\/a> told The Guardian, and the fuzzy IKEA orangutan eventually did the trick.<\/p>\n

Punch\u2019s reintroduction to the zoo\u2019s troop of macaques has been rocky and very public. When videos of Punch curling up with the toy on the concrete floor of the zoo enclosure went viral, well, people had feelings \u2014 most of which can be summed up by the phrase \u201cI WOULD DIE FOR PUNCH,\u201d<\/a> which has pervaded social platforms in varying degrees of sincerity and satire in recent days. We are all, forgive the phrase, Punch-drunk.<\/p>\n

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(David Mareuil\/Anadolu via Getty Images) Baby monkey named Punch finds comfort with a stuffed animal<\/p>\n

Typing \u201cPunch the monkey\u201d into search engines triggers a shower of animated hearts featuring Punch\u2019s face cuddled up against his fuzzy friend. The zoo has been swarmed with visitors clamoring to see Punch, and IKEA outposts worldwide have sold out<\/a> of the plush orangutan. Jon Stewart<\/a> roasted the baby monkey, to mixed reviews; Punch\u2019s mother is being read to filth in YouTube comments; and a notorious duo of d-bags tried to buy him as a pet. Every aspect of Punch\u2019s ordeal and the viral fame that has followed is a reminder that the times we live in are uniquely dystopian, venal and disheartening \u2014 and that a majority of us think we have no choice but to accept it. For Punch\u2019s sake, and our own, we might want to reconsider.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to relate quite so hard<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mental state is currently 50% staring at the horizon like a Werner Herzog penguin<\/a> and 50% Punch the Monkey defending his stuffed toy against the world. There is no in-between,\u201d wrote a commenter on one clip of Punch, in hyperbole both performative and familiar. For almost as long as there\u2019s been an internet, it has been ruled and animated and possibly held together by a shared need to look at cute animals several times a day at minimum. Even in increasingly divisive times, cute animals are our common language, offering points of connection and escape routes for disagreements. (Your friend\u2019s dating a MAGA chud and hanging out with them is excruciating? Bummer \u2014 but until they break up, your friendship can survive on Moo Deng<\/a> memes.)<\/p>\n

Every aspect of Punch\u2019s ordeal and the viral fame that has followed is a reminder that the times we live in are uniquely dystopian, venal and disheartening \u2014 and that a majority of us think we have no choice but to accept it. For Punch\u2019s sake, and our own, we might want to reconsider.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just that we love the LOLcats<\/a> and the good dogs<\/a> and the self-involved birbs<\/a> and the octopuses<\/a> who are too smart for this nonsense: They are avatars that let people connect, empathize, flirt and vent while avoiding vulnerability. Remember the viral fame of the IKEA monkey?<\/a> In the 2012 photo that kicked everyone\u2019s heart in the shins, the little guy in a shearling coat was framed staring balefully into the middle distance out the window of the Toronto-area IKEA where he\u2019d been abandoned. The undeniable intersection of cute, sad and stylish launched a thousand reaction memes<\/a>. (Darwin now resides at a primate sanctuary in Canada where he lives a peaceful, camera-avoidant life.)<\/p>\n

But keep in mind, when your\/my eyes fill with tears watching little Punch rush to his orangutan for comfort, what might look to us like bullying is how primates establish their societal hierarchies. \u201cAll troop dynamics are complicated, and macaques\u2019 can be especially intense,\u201d says Colleen Reed, one of the primate keepers <\/a>at the Oregon Zoo<\/a>. \u201cWhen we\u2019re watching [Punch clips], we project human emotions onto [him]. It\u2019s challenging not to because primates are so closely related to us. There\u2019s a reason why people are having visceral feelings watching him get pushed around, compared to watching hyenas fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

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(David Mareuil\/Anadolu via Getty Images) Baby monkey named Punch with a companion<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to have monkeys as pets<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a good few months of not having to know what Andrew Tate<\/a> is up to. Unfortunately, the manosphere\u2019s<\/a> favorite sex pest didn\u2019t want to miss a chance to exploit another living being, and after Tate and his brother Tristan saw Punch, the latter hopped onto X to write, \u201cWhich Zoo owns this monkey. @Cobratate and I will buy it. 250,000 dollars. I am NOT kidding.\u201d Though the post prompted a collective Nah, bro<\/a>, even writing it says a lot about the Tates\u2019 unwavering confidence that the world is as mercenary as they are, and that everything has a price.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, in the case of the exotic-animal trade<\/a>, it\u2019s often true. Trafficking exotic animals, from tigers to reptiles to birds and beyond, underpins a staggering amount of organized crime globally. The United States alone is one of the world\u2019s largest markets for them: Lack of regulation makes exact numbers difficult, but a December 2025 report from the Center for Biological Diversity<\/a> estimates that \u201cmore than 248 million animals were captured from the wild and imported into the United States to be kept as pets from 2016 to 2024.\u201d They are sold at exotic-pet shows, on the dark web, through shady roadside zoos like \u201cTiger King\u201d <\/a>Joe Exotic\u2019s, and by wildlife traffickers.<\/p>\n

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They are often sold to people who are unequipped to take care of them: Recall Justin Bieber\u2019s<\/a> pet capuchin monkey, Mally, who was confiscated by German customs officials in 2013 after the 21-year-old brought him to the country on a private plane, with no documentation. (\u201cPeople are always like, \u2018Why did you get a monkey?\u2019 If you could get a monkey, well, you would get a f**king monkey, too! Monkeys are awesome,\u201d said Bieber in 2016<\/a>, when he began talking about getting another monkey.)<\/p>\n

U.S. laws on owning exotic animals vary from state to state, with patchy oversight, and smaller primates \u2014 \u201cbecause they\u2019re so cute and so tiny and they seem like they\u2019re going to be very easy\u201d\u2014 are regularly sought as pets, says Reed. \u201cWhat\u2019s frustrating for people in the sanctuary and zoo world is that these animals are social individuals; they live in groups. When you see a human with one monkey, that is not good for that monkey.\u201d (Looking at you, Man in the Yellow Hat<\/a>.) The federal Captive Primate Safety Act<\/a>, which was introduced in Congress this year, would put a stop to the breeding and selling of monkeys as pets, so call your reps. Tell them Punch sent you.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to erase birth mothers<\/p>\n

Why Punch\u2019s mother abandoned him isn\u2019t clear, though the zoo\u2019s staff acknowledged that she was a first-time mother who gave birth during a heat wave, both high-stress situations.\u00a0The little guy\u2019s plight is heartbreaking. But it\u2019s likely his mother\u2019s was too, and her absence is particularly resonant in the United States of 2026, where erasure of birth mothers is a key tenet of forced-birth enthusiasts and the current nominee for Surgeon General thinks contraception is \u201cdisrespect of life.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0During oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson<\/a>, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett<\/a> suggested that safe-haven laws have effectively made the need for abortion access obsolete, insinuating that there\u2019s little difference \u201cbetween, say, the ability to get an abortion at 23 weeks, or the state requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion.\u201d (It\u2019s only 15, 16 more weeks, after all; it\u2019s only the state controlling your body.) Like her fellow justice Samuel Alito<\/a>, Barrett wants nothing more than to increase \u201cthe domestic supply of infants<\/a>\u201d mentioned in a footnote in Alito\u2019s leaked draft opinion.<\/p>\n

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(David Mareuil\/Anadolu via Getty Images) Baby monkey named Punch with his stuffed monkey friend<\/p>\n

The little guy\u2019s plight is heartbreaking. But it\u2019s likely his mother\u2019s was too, and her absence is particularly resonant in the United States of 2026, where erasure of birth mothers is a key tenet of forced-birth enthusiasts and the current nominee for Surgeon General thinks contraception is \u201cdisrespect of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her 2024 book \u201cRelinquished<\/a>: The Politics of Adoption and The Privilege of American Motherhood,\u201d Dr. Gretchen Sisson<\/a> examines the coercive, monetized private-adoption industry that continues to perpetuate Baby Scoop\u2013era<\/a> tactics that paint birth mothers as callous and irresponsible. It\u2019s flourishing under a powerful Christian Right that has since added baby boxes<\/a> to its list of why abortion is no longer necessary; their logic, per Sisson, is, \u201cIf we just take the babies from these families and move them to these other families, then we don\u2019t need to provide insurance coverage for infertility treatments. We don\u2019t need to invest<\/a> in vulnerable and young families. We don\u2019t need to make abortion accessible or affordable. We just introduce adoption, and the \u2018problem\u2019 is solved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Punch\u2019s birth wasn\u2019t a political hot potato, but the same narrative that erases birth mothers pervades expressions of sympathy for him \u2014 what kind of awful, cruel mother could spurn little Punch! \u201cWhen you see a quick clip online, you\u2019re not getting context about the whole group\u201d of macaques, says Reed. Punch\u2019s mother remains with the troop, but she may or may not accept Punch as he\u2019s re-integrated. \u201cReasons for rejection depend on the type of primate, but also the individual,\u201d says Reed. \u201cThis could have been a very low-ranking female who was trying to protect herself. Without knowing the group dynamics, we can\u2019t say.\u201d<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to profit from misery<\/p>\n

The pathos of Punch and his orangutan, of course, is what\u2019s had so many people glued to their screens. In his landmark 1950s-era experiments on attachment, primate researcher Harry Harlow<\/a> found that the baby rhesus monkeys he separated from their mothers at birth sought more comfort from the inanimate mother covered in soft toweling than the wire one that dispensed food. Seeing Punch run to seek comfort from a plush animal with no capacity to actively nurture him is likely the thing that we\u2019re most viscerally responding to<\/a>. And it\u2019s what makes the misery profiteering that has followed Punch\u2019s viral fame seem especially tasteless.<\/p>\n

IKEA hasn\u2019t been able to keep up <\/a>with the demand for its $19 Djungelskog stuffie, which began flying off the shelves after Punch went viral. The number of them that have since popped up on eBay and Etsy in the past few days \u2014 some prices above $100 \u2014 suggests that many were snapped up by opportunistic stuffie scalpers. In the meantime, the company launched a new ad that features the sold-out toy being cuddled by a Punch-like plush monkey with the copy \u201cSometimes, family is who we find along the way\u201d and the social-media tagline \u201cWe\u2019re ALL Punch\u2019s family now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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(Beata Zawrzel\/NurPhoto via Getty Images) \u2018Djungelskog\u2019 orangutan plush toys seen in IKEA<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, a chintzy drop-shipping site that calls itself the \u201cofficial\u201d Punch Monkey retailer is selling \u201cTeam Punch\u201d t-shirts, mugs, stickers and more. A children\u2019s book with a title that reeks of AI (\u201cThe Baby Monkey PUNCH: How One Tiny Monkey Showed the World Bravery and Resilience \u2014 Picture Book About Making New Friends and Overcoming Loneliness for Kids\u201d) is now on Amazon, and more slapped-together merch. Fast Company<\/a> reported on Thursday that \u201cSavvy e-commerce sellers are capitalizing on the viral video of the moment. Can we blame them?\u201d<\/p>\n

We can. And we should: Capitalizing on Punch\u2019s distress, exploiting his vulnerability and commodifying a situation that might not end the way people want it to would be ghoulish even if the proceeds were going to wildlife conservation. (That\u2019s not what these drop-ship hucksters appear to be doing \u2014 though, from a look at IKEA\u2019s Instagram account, the retailer might well be shamed into doing so.) Meanwhile, the marketing industry currently high-fiving IKEA\u2019s quick pivot to misery commodification are equally culpable, like the Instagram Reel from a company called MarketingMentor enthusing that \u201cPunch just gave IKEA millions of dollars in free marketing, making it one of the smartest PR moves of 2026.\u201d (First of all: Calm down, it\u2019s still February.)<\/p>\n

There is an opportunity to harness the energy of the millions of people anxiously waiting for the latest developments in Punch\u2019s saga to drop, and it can be about more than profit: meeting this moment can involve advocating for better habitats<\/a>, joining advocacy initiatives for macaques and other primates and even just learning more about wildlife conservation. The past week has shown that there\u2019s a little bit of Punch in all of us, so let\u2019s help ensure that the future holds fewer stories like his.<\/p>\n

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