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Recently, I feel like there’s been an adorable baby zoo animal blessing my Instagram Reels feed every few months, and they’ve been bringing the internet together. For a few weeks, it feels like everyone is experiencing a shared empathy towards these tiny creatures (I’m mostly looking at you, Pesto) as they navigate their tiny worlds. But what about zoo criticism? Did anyone else have to write those argumentative papers in third grade?
Anyways, there are lots of opportunities for content in cute baby animal situations like these, making social media the perfect place for animal fanbases to grow. People even create memes and skits and visit the animals in person.
Still, it makes me sad when the internet decides to collectively move on from a creature that, days ago, was on everyone’s mind. They aren’t dead, just slightly less itty bitty. Without further ado, let’s recap the recent internet obsessions — and follow up on where they are now!
Pesto
This guy is by far my favorite. I followed Pesto from the start of his oversized, fluffy Chewbacca life in 2024. For those of you who missed this glorious internet period, Pesto is a king penguin in Melbourne, Australia’s Sea Life Aquarium.
As a chick, Pesto quickly became popular online for his massive size, emphasized by his shaggy brown feathers. He simply dwarfed the adults. As he molted, he embodied a swaggy pimp coat look, or maybe a rich lady at the opera. It was impeccable.
My friends and I sent each other countless reels. Pesto was an icon. And then… he disappeared from our feeds.
Today, Pesto has lost much of his baby weight (around 10 kg!) and is looking a lot more like a normal penguin. It’s hard to find any current updates on him, except that he has a new beau, a female penguin called Pudding. That will be my royal wedding, thanks for asking.
Moo Deng
I honestly have to Google this one. Moo Deng is a pygmy hippo at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Bang Phra, Thailand, but she never really did it for me. Pesto supremacy.
My friend disagrees: “Moo Deng biting a calf — she’s the OG, she’s the original,” she asserted with a fiery passion. Apparently, Moo Deng was known for her spark, and that quickly turned into many memes. How can something so tiny and cute hold so much ferociousness?
So, according to the AI overview, Moo Deng means “bouncy pork,” which is admittedly adorable. But Pesto refers to both a delicious sauce and a hilarious penguin, so I don’t think it’s really a competition.
Moo Deng has encountered some drama after the zoo recently responded to backlash over the poor condition of the hippo enclosure. But this can be chalked up to the amount of mud hippos need for their skin quality and the waste they produce in between habitat cleanings.
Punch
Punch is the internet’s latest obsession. He’s a Japanese macaque in Tokyo, Japan, at the Ichikawa City Zoo.
He brings to our phones all the “abandoned forest animal” dreams that Disney instilled in us from a young age. It’s the perfect tragedy, and we can’t look away even as the older monkeys shove him into lockers and steal his lunch money.
His relationship with his surrogate mother/Ikea monkey stuffed animal warms even the most frigid heart. Maybe it can warm Boston!
Also, a public service announcement: if you Google “punch monkey” like I did when writing this, little hearts float down the screen. If that doesn’t scream “the internet is obsessed,” I don’t know what will.
Punch is currently wooing visitors day after day. He reportedly learned to wave and is even moving on from stuffed-animal emotional support to real-live monkey business! AKA, he isn’t getting absolutely destroyed by those monkey cronies anymore.
I hope the internet never stops this trend.
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