Punch, a six-month-old Japanese macaque monkey with enormous round eyes, long spindly arms and an adorable potbelly, has no idea that outside the four walls of his enclosure he’s a global celebrity.
On February 5, Ichikawa City Zoo – 20 miles outside Tokyo – posted a picture online of Punch clinging desperately to an orangutan soft toy from Ikea alongside a heartbreaking caption that revealed the infant had been abandoned by his mother.
The image quickly went viral, amassing over 5million views and prompting an outpouring of sympathy.
‘I pray for him every day,’ wrote one Instagram user. ‘Please, God, protect him!’ cried another, alongside the trending hashtag #HangInTherePunch.
The following weekend after the initial post, 8,000 people flocked to Ichikawa Zoo to see the monkey, double the number from the same time the previous year.
Then four days later, events took a turn for the absurd when alleged rapist Andrew Tate offered to buy Punch for a quarter of a million dollars.
One thing is, for sure, it only took one social media post of a ‘lonely’ monkey for a star to be born.
Certainly, Punch’s stratospheric rise from unwanted infant to simian superstar is a story you’d expect to come out of Hollywood, not a small Japanese city, home to less than half a million people and where one of the main tourist attractions aside from the zoo is a swimming pool heated by the incineration of household waste. And yet, this small macaque is now as well-known in Jaipur and Jersey as he is in Japan.
Hundreds of videos are now circulating online of Punch playing alone with his orangutan plushie, guarding it from other primates twice his size and even using it as a pillow while he sleeps.
All the while, further videos show Punch being shunned and bullied by his troop who physically push him away, baring their lethally sharp teeth.
In one horrifying clip, shared widely online, an adult monkey can be seen hurling Punch helplessly around the enclosure like an Olympic hammer.
As Ikea sells out of replica orangutan soft toys, numerous social media accounts offer daily Punch updates and some devoted fans plead with Ichikawa Zoo to accept financial donations, a six-month old monkey has become the most famous animal on the planet.
When Punch was born in captivity on July 26 last year, 24-year-old zookeeper Kosuke Shikano immediately knew that something was wrong.
For after a protracted and difficult labour, Punch’s mother ignored her helpless son. The keeper tried to force the two together, but after each attempt Punch was pushed away. He tried to feed and he was tossed aside. He tried to nuzzle and he was spurned.
And Punch wasn’t just neglected by his mother, he was abandoned by his troop.
‘In the monkey mountain troop,’ explained keeper Shikano, ‘other mother monkeys sometimes take on childcare, so we observed from a distance on the day of birth. But there were no such signs.’
There are theories as to why Punch was ignored by his mother. The traumatic nature of her labour was one explanation, while the blistering temperatures of last summer’s heatwave were another.
But either way, Punch’s keepers had no choice but to take him away from the troop and rear him by hand. That meant swaddling him in blankets for warmth and hand-feeding him from a bottle. But there was a further issue. Monkeys instinctively hold on to their mothers, both for safety but also to assist in vital muscle development. And this is where the idea for a soft toy came in. Punch was given a few toys to choose from – including a giraffe – but the one he immediately gravitated towards was an orange orangutan from Ikea which retails for £17 and is 36 cm tall – twice the size of pint-sized Punch.
‘The stuffed animal’s fur made it easy to grab,’ continued keeper Shikano. ‘And its appearance is also similar to a monkey, which likely provided a sense of security [to Punch].’
On January 19, Punch – who was named after the famous Japanese satirical cartoonist Kazuhiko Kato’s Monkey Punch – was returned to the troop’s ‘monkey mountain’ enclosure in a bid to reintegrate him with the group. And it was two weeks later that the zoo shared that heartbreaking image of Punch, isolated from the troop and draped in late afternoon sun, clinging desperately to his substitute mother.
Responses to videos and images of Punch have ranged from the endearing to the comical, with one Gen Z user declaring: ‘Dear God, please take away all of little Punch’s pain and give it to every single one of my enemies.’
‘My heart aches for this monkey,’ posted another. ‘But it aches even more for the day when people forget its story.’
Unsurprisingly, Ikea sensed a commercial opportunity and sent the company’s regional president and ‘chief sustainability officer’, Petra Fare, to visit the zoo to gift the monkey additional soft toys.
The Swedish flat-pack giant has since reported ‘a clear increase in sales of the Djungelskog orangutan toy, particularly in Japan, the US and South Korea,’ where outlets quickly sold out, prompting some owners of the toy to list them on eBay for as much as $350 (£260) – fifteen times the original price.
Thankfully, however, there appears to be a happy ending in sight. ‘Punch is gradually deepening his interactions with the troop of monkeys,’ Ichikawa City Zoo recently declared.
Indeed, videos have since emerged of the youngster socialising with his troop, in one case receiving a much-needed groom and even sharing a hug with an older monkey.
But fanfare aside, what is it about Punch that has so captured the world’s hearts?
Laika, a Moscow street dog was sent on a horrific one-way mission to space by the Soviet Union in 1957. Dolly the sheep was the first animal to be successfully cloned in Scotland in 1996.
Homing pigeon Cher Ami saved the lives of over 500 US military personnel during the First World War. With these esteemed animal heroes in mind, you may well ask what has Punch ever done?
Of course, the truth is that Punch is much more than a lonely monkey. He is the vulnerable child inside all of us who wishes for nothing more than to be loved.
And with the good news that he is finally integrating with his troop, for this young primate at least, the monkey is off his back.
