---
title: "Punch, the baby monkey who clung to a plushie, turns 1 with 2,500 birthday cards"
description: "A young macaque named Punch, abandoned by his mother at birth and later photographed clinging to a stuffed orangutan for comfort while other monkeys rejected him, turned 1 on Sunday. His story drew tens of thousands of visitors to a small Japanese zoo, and about 2,500 birthday cards from Japan and abroad."
category: "World"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/world
author: "Omar Haddad"
published: 2026-07-26T16:56:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-26T16:56:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/punch-the-baby-monkey-who-clung-to-a-plushie-turns-1-with-2-500-birthday-cards
tags: ["punch", "japan", "macaque", "zoo", "animals"]
---
# Punch, the baby monkey who clung to a plushie, turns 1 with 2,500 birthday cards

A young macaque named Punch, abandoned by his mother at birth and later photographed clinging to a stuffed orangutan for comfort while other monkeys rejected him, turned 1 on Sunday. His story drew tens of thousands of visitors to a small Japanese zoo, and about 2,500 birthday cards from Japan and abroad.

A year ago, a baby macaque at a small zoo outside Tokyo looked unlikely to make it. On Sunday, he turned 1, and a wall of birthday cards, [ABC7 reports](https://abc7.com/post/japans-monkey-sensation-punch-gets-thousands-birthday-messages-he-turns-1-sunday/19579247/).

## A rough start

Punch was born in July 2025 at the Ichikawa City Zoological and Botanical Garden in Ichikawa, Japan, and was abandoned by his mother shortly after birth, presumably, the zoo said, because of exhaustion. That left his survival to two human keepers, who took over his round-the-clock care in the fragile first months.

What turned a struggling infant into an international sensation was a set of images posted online in February 2026. They showed Punch clinging to a stuffed orangutan for comfort as other monkeys in the enclosure rejected him, a small primate finding security in a plushie because the troop would not have him. The pictures did what such pictures do: they spread. Under the hashtag #HangInTherePunch, tens of thousands of people traveled to the modest zoo to see him, about half of them from overseas.

## The birthday

For his first birthday, the zoo set up an indoor exhibit with the birthday cards on display, roughly 2,500 of them from inside and outside Japan, alongside a video chronicling his development over the year. "As Punch was trying very hard struggling to live each day, his two keepers did everything they can," said zoo head Takashi Yasunaga, crediting the people who raised him when his own troop would not.

The happier turn is that Punch no longer needs the plushie. After about six months of special care, he was placed with the other monkeys in mid-January, and now mingles among the roughly 50 macaques in the enclosure, the outcome the keepers had been working toward all along.

## Why a monkey's birthday travels

It is fair to ask why a macaque's first birthday reaches Los Angeles at all, and the answer is the same reason it reached anyone. Punch's story is a clean, legible version of something people respond to everywhere: a small creature that was rejected and nearly did not survive, kept alive by the patience of a couple of caretakers, and then, slowly, accepted. It asks nothing of the reader except to be glad it worked out. Amid a heavy news cycle, the Herald runs it in that spirit, as a small, true, good-news story from the other side of the world.

## Sources

- [Japan's monkey sensation Punch gets thousands of birthday messages as he turns 1 on Sunday](https://abc7.com/post/japans-monkey-sensation-punch-gets-thousands-birthday-messages-he-turns-1-sunday/19579247/)