Punch the Monkey has gone viral, capturing the hearts of millions while dragging around a stuffed orangutan for emotional support after being rejected by his mother and troop. Animal experts at Northeastern University said that the story is a look into primate behavior – but not just the behavior of monkeys. “It tells us more about our species than Punch himself,” said Rébecca Kleinberger, assistant professor and director of Northeastern’s INTERACT Animal Lab, which uses technology to improve animals’ lives and described Punch’s orangutan as “classic enrichment” for a behavior in social species or managed care. Kleinberger said the way humans are interpreting Punch’s predicament is very biased and based on snippets of videos, not necessarily a complete picture of what is happening to the monkey. “Maybe the world needs those kinds of stories right now,” she said.
Mark Wells, assistant teaching professor of philosophy at Northeastern, concurred. “It was a standard social media story of people getting way out of their depth into a thing they just do not understand, then having very strong hot takes on something they don’t understand, which is the care for animals – and highly complex animals – like Punch,” said Wells, who researches animal ethics. “The frenzy kind of caught me off guard in that sense.”
