Early this year, a baby Japanese macaque named Punch became one of the internet’s most closely followed animals. Born at Ichikawa City Zoo near Tokyo, the young monkey was hand-raised after being abandoned by his mother.
Keepers gave him a plush orangutan for comfort, and videos of Punch carrying the toy around his enclosure spread rapidly across TikTok and X.
The clips prompted hashtags of support, drew visitors to the zoo and generated international media coverage. Punch’s rise reflects a pattern more than 20 years in the making.
Since the early broadband era, individual animals – pandas, polar bears, cats, dogs, giraffes, walruses and owls – have become recurring figures in online life, followed in real time by audiences who return for updates and translate digital attention into real-world behaviour.
2005: Tai Shan the giant panda
Tai Shan was born on July 9, 2005 at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington. His birth coincided with the growing popularity of live webcams. The zoo’s panda cam drew millions of viewers over time, and more than 200,000 people participated in an online naming contest.
Tai Shan remained in the US until 2010 under a breeding agreement with China. In the weeks before his departure to the Dujiangyan Panda Base and research centre in Sichuan, the zoo reported record attendance as visitors queued to see Tai Shan one last time.
2006: Knut the polar bear
Knut was born at the Berlin Zoological Garden in December 2006. Rejected by his mother, he was hand-raised by keepers and quickly became the focus of national and international media coverage, dubbed Knutmania.
Berlin Zoo estimated that Knut contributed millions of euros in additional revenue during 2007. He died in March 2011 after collapsing into his enclosure’s pool. Subsequent investigations identified encephalitis as the underlying cause of his collapse.
2008: Maru the cat
Maru was a Scottish Fold cat born in Japan in 2007, whose owner began uploading videos to YouTube in 2008. Maru became known for climbing into cardboard boxes and interacting with household objects. His channel accumulated hundreds of millions of views, and in 2016, Guinness World Records recognised Maru as the most viewed animal on YouTube.
Maru’s videos continued for more than 15 years, building a subscriber base that followed his daily routines. When he died in 2025 at the age of 18, fans shared tributes across platforms.
2012: Grumpy Cat
Grumpy Cat, born Tardar Sauce, was a mixed-breed cat whose distinctive facial features became a viral meme after a photograph was posted to Reddit in 2012, the same year she was born. The image spread rapidly across social networks and became one of the defining memes of the early 2010s.
Grumpy Cat’s popularity extended beyond a single image – and well beyond her hometown of Arizona. She accumulated millions of followers, appeared at public events, inspired merchandise and starred in a television film before her death in 2019.
2013: Kabosu the Shiba Inu
Kabosu was a Shiba Inu dog from Japan, thought to be born in 2005. She rose to fame in 2013 after one of her photographs became widely known as the “Doge” meme. The image, paired with multicoloured text in Comic Sans font, circulated globally and later inspired the creation of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
Kabosu’s influence extended beyond the original meme cycle. A bronze statue was installed in her honour in Sakura, Japan, in 2022. When she died in 2024, major international outlets carried obituaries.
2016: Harambe the gorilla
Harambe was a western lowland gorilla, born in 1999 at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville in Texas. In 2016, he was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo at the age of 17, after a child entered his enclosure. The incident generated immediate global news coverage and trended widely on social media. Western lowland gorillas can live to be 50.
Online petitions gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures in the days that followed. Harambe’s name remained embedded in internet discourse long after the initial news cycle.
2017: April the giraffe
April was a giraffe born at Animal Adventure Park in New York in 2000. Her pregnancy was livestreamed on YouTube in early 2017, with the feed attracting more than 30 million viewers in the weeks leading up to the birth. More than one million watched live when April delivered her calf, Tajiri.
The event generated sustained media coverage and became a shared online countdown across time zones.
April was euthanised in 2021 owing to acute arthritis.
2022: Freya the walrus
Freya was a walrus spotted repeatedly in Oslo Harbour in 2022. Videos of her climbing on to boats circulated widely on social media, drawing crowds who gathered to watch and photograph her.
Norwegian authorities ultimately euthanised Freya in August 2022, citing public safety concerns. The decision prompted international criticism and online debate, and inspired a statue named For Our Sins in her honour.
2023: Flaco the owl
Born in 2010, Flaco was a Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from New York's Central Park Zoo in February 2023 after vandals damaged his enclosure. He remained at large in Manhattan for more than a year.
Residents posted regular sighting updates across social media. Flaco died in February 2024 after colliding with a building, and his death prompted tributes in the form of photos, cards and other mementos left under the oak tree he was often spotted in.
2020s: Chonkus Maximus the stray cat
A large black-and-white stray cat in Crete nicknamed Chonkus Maximus became a viral attraction after travellers began posting photographs and marking his location on Google Maps. The listing accumulated hundreds of reviews, with users describing visits as though he were a landmark.
His popularity spread through user-generated content rather than formal promotion.
2024: Moo Deng the pygmy hippo
Moo Deng was born at Thailand's Khao Kheow Open Zoo in 2024. Short-form videos of her feeding and roaming her enclosure circulated widely on TikTok and Instagram, accumulating millions of views.
News agencies reported that her popularity drove unexpectedly large crowds to the zoo. Her first-birthday celebrations in 2025, too, drew thousands of visitors.
2026: Punch the monkey
Punch is a Japanese macaque born in July 2025 at Ichikawa City Zoo. After being abandoned by his mother, he was hand-raised by keepers, who introduced a plush orangutan as a comfort object.
When videos of Punch carrying the toy began circulating in early 2026, the response extended beyond simple virality. Viewers shared updates about his behaviour, discussed his social development and closely followed reports of his gradual integration with other macaques. The specific toy he carried became widely sought after, and visitor numbers to the zoo increased during the peak of online attention.
Unlike earlier internet animal moments that centred on spectacle or novelty, Punch’s popularity has revolved around vulnerability and care. The focus hasn't been a single viral event. Rather, the attention has only snowballed as people follow his development – how he sleeps, whether he bonds with other monkeys, and when he might no longer need the toy. Updates continue to circulate as observers track his progress in near real time.
