I’ve spent the last couple of months clutching my phone to my chest every morning and before bed, checking on Punch. It’s become a ritual—wake up, look for Punch. Before sleeping, one last video just to see if he’s okay. I’ve noticed how automatic it’s become—the same way you’d check on someone you love.
At some point, watching the screen didn’t feel like enough, so I went to see him in person at Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan. I wanted to understand why something so small had taken up so much space in me. So much so that I spent three hours in the scorching almost-summer sun just standing outside the enclosure and watching Punch.
The zoo was busy that day—kids running, families pointing at other exhibits, the usual noise of an afternoon in the zoo. But I barely registered any of it. I was there for one reason, and once I found his enclosure, I didn’t move.
The author at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan
If you haven’t fallen down the rabbit hole as I have, this is what it’s about. Punch is a baby monkey rejected by his mother at birth. He was raised by zookeepers and given a giant orangutan plushie (yes, I bought one, too) to replace the mother he was wired to cling to. Now he carries it everywhere. When his keepers enter the monkey enclosure, he runs and clings to them for dear life.
He wasn’t supposed to survive the way he has. Maternal rejection in primates is often a death sentence. But the keepers stepped in, and somehow this little monkey with too-big eyes and a stuffed toy almost twice his size became the most watched baby animal on the internet. Something about his story cut through all the noise.
Punch and his orangutan plushie
The author gets her own plushie
The whole world fell in love with Punch.
At first, I thought it was just because he’s cute. Big eyes, tiny hands, that desperate grip—he’s built to make your heart melt. But being there, standing just a few feet away from him, I realized it wasn’t just that.
He’s smaller than I expected. The way he held on to the keepers during feeding time—it was almost as if he has a real and unfiltered human instinct. And seeing that up close made everything feel more immediate, more physical. My chest tightened in real time. I wanted to go to him and hug him.
The strange part? I don’t even like macaque monkeys. They actually scare me, which is why my reaction to Punch surprised me. I don’t think this is about liking monkeys. It’s about what he brings out.
When Punch feels threatened, on instinct, he clutches his stuffed toy tighter. I didn’t see him with his plushie this time. He was playing with the others, jumping from the ropes, running around. Watching him this carefree hit differently, knowing it wasn’t easy for him to integrate into that world after being abandoned by his mother at birth. I wanted to hold him, protect him, make him feel safe, like I do with my dog. There’s something quietly remarkable about watching an animal that had every reason to shut down, but instead learned how to play. How to belong. I stayed longer than I planned, just watching him chase the others, completely unbothered.
There’s something quietly remarkable about watching an animal that had every reason to shut down, but instead learned how to play
When older monkeys get too close—when they “bully” him—I feel for him instantly. Even at the zoo, I found myself watching the keepers more than him sometimes, waiting for the moment they’d step in. And when they did—when he ran to them and clung—I felt this wave of relief.
I recognize that feeling more than I’d like to admit—that moment of not having someone to turn to, even briefly. Watching something so small navigate that alone feels wrong. And yet he does navigate it. That’s the part I keep coming back to. Not that it’s hard for him—but that he keeps going anyway, keeps reaching for whoever is willing to hold him.
Watching Punch felt like watching a part of myself. The part that still wanted comfort when things felt overwhelming. The part that didn’t always know how to cope. He doesn’t pretend to be okay. And maybe that’s why this feels so healing.
We spend so much time holding it together. Punch doesn’t. When he’s scared, he clings. When he feels safe, you can see it instantly. No filters, no pretending—just feeling. And somehow, that makes me feel like it’s okay not to be okay, too.
I’ve spent years getting better at performing fine. At saying “I’m okay” the right way, in the right tone, so that people believe it and move on. Punch doesn’t have that skill. Watching him made me wonder when I learned it—and whether it’s actually something worth keeping.
Standing there at the zoo, I realized it wasn’t just about him anymore. It was about that quiet, younger part of me that still exists. The one that still looks for safety, still softens when it finds it, and still wants reassurance without having to explain why. I don’t think we ever fully outgrow that part. We just learn to talk over it, to keep it quiet, to act like we’ve figured it all out. But it’s still there. Standing before that enclosure for three hours in the heat, I felt it clearly—that kid in me who still gets scared, who still needs to be told it’s going to be okay.
People all over the world are rooting for him. And that gives me hope. It means the empathy is still there. We still care. We still soften when we see something vulnerable. Punch reminds me of that. We live in a world that can feel relentlessly hard and loud and indifferent. And then along comes this tiny monkey with his stuffed orangutan, and suddenly millions of strangers are invested in whether he gets enough to eat and whether the other monkeys are being nice to him. That’s not nothing. That’s actually everything.
So yes, I’ll keep checking on him. I’ll keep hugging my dog a little tighter after every video. Because somewhere in all of this, I’m not just watching Punch learn how to feel safe and navigate the world. I’m remembering how to do it, too.
