Baby monkey Punch warms hearts in Japan

Punch, an adolescent macaque, has become a social media sensation and a boon for Japan's Ichikawa zoo, which he calls home.

Officially named Punch-Kun, his mother felt such stress following his birth during a heatwave last July that she acted to protect herself by deserting her newborn son. Zookeepers nursed the baby macaque until he'd developed enough to be reintroduced to the macaque troop.

Ostracised and tormented by these monkeys, Punch's sense of isolation began developing into anxiety. In a bid to ease his reintegration, his keepers supplied Punch with a toy orangutan for company, which he's become attached to like a surrogate mother.

This led to videos trending of Punch being attacked and shunned, gripping his orangutan and trailing it behind him everywhere, complete with the hashtag #HangInTherePunch! News networks chased the story, and his fame crossed into the physical world, with Ichikawa zoo, which expects between one and two hundred visitors a day in winter, seeing nearly three thousand people through its gates - including an international following, with American Jon Frigillana among them.

Jon Frigillana: "We didn't fly to Japan all the way just for Punch. But, you know, he's been making the headlines. His story is cute, and we just wanted to see him."

With Punch now more outgoing and the troop becoming more tolerant of him, things may be turning a corner, as he's sometimes seen playing with other macaques and has formed a close bond with a five-year-old female, Momo-Chan.

Facing off against doom and gloom reporting, there's a message of hope and resilience running through Punch's tale which resonates deeply with Viviane Oliveira, who's visiting Ichikawa from Brazil.

Viviane Oliveira: "Yeah, I think he really represents, like, the sense of hope. Because it doesn't matter where you are, you know, there's always hope. You know, he was facing a hard time. But it doesn't mean - when you're facing hard time, it doesn't mean that we're going to be like that forever." View Less